Doug,
It is a toss up. It really depends if you have a good flow of goldenrod coming in soon. If you do, you might give them a chance.
You say the brood pattern is not very solid. PM me a picture of the brood, I will post it for you. Now a days we don?t want a completely solid brood pattern. We want the bees to remove any problems.
If it is half empty, as many empty cells as capped, that is an indication that the queen mated mostly with her brothers.
Jim