When the inspector checked out my hive #2 on August 28, they had clearly superseded and the new queen was a drone-layer. They were in the process of superseding her. The inspector destroyed the queen cups and queen cells they were working on and put me in contact with a guy to get a new queen. I picked up the new queen that Thursday night. Friday, Aug 29th, afternoon I put her (in her cage) into the hive and killed the existing queen. On Monday, September 1st, I took the cork out of the candy end of the cage.
Also, because of the inspectors recommendations, on Friday Aug 29th I took two frames of brood and bees and put them into Hive #2 to help build up worker count.
Today, we went into the hive to see how things are going... except for the frames of brood that already existed (or that I put in) all drawn frames are nectar-bound. I probably jumped the gun... but before I realized there was no queen present I axed the queen cells, despite the little voice telling me to wait.
So Hive #2 is now queenless and has no queens in the process of being made, which means I'm now looking at what, not having a queen until the beginning of October? At this point I'm not sure what to do. Should I let them build on up and hope that she mates well and they get winter bees going, buy ANOTHER new queen, or take both brood boxes and combine one each with the other 2 hives using newspaper?
Thank you!