Tentative conclusion: We should see eggs laid by the new queen in the red hive sometime between 18 July and 1 August. (I wonder if we could/should transfer a frame or two of brood from the yellow hive to the red hive, to make up for the gap in production?)
Background information: The red hive swarmed on Canada Day. The queen must have laid the egg for the new queen before leaving. The workers stop feeding her before swarming, so she can slim down and fly. Query: does she continue to lay despite the Weight Watchers? Assuming that she does, the latest the egg for the new queen could be laid is 1 July 2009. "The queen cell is sealed 8 days after the egg is laid [latest, 9 July 2009]. The virgin queen emerges 8 days later [17 July 2009], on the sixteenth day, and may fly next day. [So assuming the latest laying, the earliest she could fly and be bred is 18 July 2009, and hmmm... see Hooper, below, p. 45.] Therefore if a colony has a clipped queen and is not making queen cells at one examination, it will not be able to get a swarm away for 17 days.... In addition, if a colony is making queen cells at one inspection, and these are killed by the beekeeper, then emergency cells will probably be started from worker larvae. If a 4 day-old larva is chosen (and this is probably the oldest they would choose), then this larva, being 7 days old (3 days in the egg and 4 days as a larva), should emerge as a queen after 9 more days (16 days minus 7 days) and can be on the wing on the tenth day after inspection. The fact that the bees will usually select a larva at least 2 days younger means that usually the virgin will not emerge for at least 11 days." (Hooper, p. 111.) "The queen mates on the wing during the first ten to twenty days of her life" (Hooper, p. 45)...."the queen starts egg-laying within a few days [after mating]."
Further: "...where the swarm has been lost, the beekeeper must deal with the colony as soon as possible to prevent other swarms, or casts, from coming out as well. The colony is opened and a good queen cell is found and is left to produce a queen (some beekeepers mark the comb by putting a drawing pin in the top bar above the cell). On no account must the chosen cell be on a comb that is shaken, or damage may result to the queen, who is quite loose in the cell. The comb should be searched thoroughly to ensure that no further queen cells are left on it, and the other combs should be shaken through and any other queen cells destroyed.
"If no hatched cells are found amongst those destroyed the colony is then left for ten to twenty days before being examined again, when the new queen will have emerged and should have mated and started to lay. [We didn't do all that; I just called Tibor Szabo Sr. and he confidently said they'd make a new queen.] It is often three weeks or more before a young queen will come into lay in a large colony. Do not be impatient and think the colony is queenless: it is unlikely to be so. The new queen is just slow in getting started. A more detailed understanding of this situation will be gained by reading the section on queenlessness in Chapter 9." (Hooper, p. 145; follows with interesting information on tearing down queen cells when bees decide not to swarm after all, etc.)
RE queenlessness: "Although it is true to say that brood is usually absent from queenless colonies, the converse is far from the truth. A colony with no brood can have a perfectly good young queen who has not as yet started to lay. In my experience the number of colonies that become queenless by natural means is very, very small. Usually the queenless colony, particularly during the main part of the active season, has been made so by some mistake by the beekeeper. Recognition of queenlessness is far from easy if one is just relying on conclusions drawn during examination of the colony. The main signs are that the colony is more irritable than usual, the bees seem to be less well-organized on the combs, very few brood cells will be polished up ready for the queen to lay in--certainly not a large circular area of such cells. Pollen in the broodnest will be shiny from being covered with honey to prevent it going mouldy whilst it is not being used. Often there will be some cells with little hoods drawn out from the top walls and often these are covering pollen, and in some cases an egg from a laying worker. All these signs are straws in the wind pointing towards queenlessness but none is conclusive." (Hooper, pp. 181-2, followed by a five-days-long sure-fire test using a brood frame from another hive.)
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