I have an out apiary with two colonies on a couple's rural property. At the end of June I did an inspection and find one colony queenless without any brood, eggs, etc. The second colony had 1 capped queen cell. I had to have some cancer removed off the top of my head the beginning of July. I was surprised when I was told not to lift over 10 pounds until the staples came out, 30 days later. I feared the worst and delayed going out there until today. To my surprise the colony with one capped queen cell was doing great. She was laying and had nice pattern. As you can imagine the queenless colony had developed laying workers but still had plenty of workers present and lots of food stores.
Would this plan work? Can I just do a newspaper combine and set the queenless colony on top of the queen right colony? Will they kill the queen in the strong colony? Do I still need to do a shake out?
Thanks in advance for your opinion.