Okay, I waited a week, still no brood. Others hives having 3-4 frames of capped brood! I took out a strip of eggs from them, and added to this one. Then looking through a box with 4 frames of brood, I got lucky and saw the queen. I took a frame of eggs for the lacking one. Our bee club says there should be 3 frames for March 15, so thought moving eggs won't set them back and might stop them from swarming.
Then, looking through some other hives, I had one I thought was pretty strong. When I opened the lid, I thought they sure were loud. I noticed some were already scenting when I first opened the lid and several throughout the box. I have not noticed that before until I've been in a box for awhile. The first box with no eggs was not doing that. And I found no brood.
Looking through another box, the first frame with brood had drone cells! I'm starting to think, what am I doing, killing the queens? But I found some capped brood, total of 4 frames. Then another box, I found drone cells among the 4 frames of brood. So maybe they're doing really good. I found the queen in another box with eggs, so took a frame for the buzzing one. Usually, I see queens off and on except when I really need to see her, but I just happened to see her these times.
With the background suggestions previously, I think I made the right choices. Seeing the drone cells, would this indicate that by the time the others raise a queen, there should be plenty of drones for her? And with the boxes with more than three frames of brood, I should be taking some from them to give to these others to prevent swarming?
Any thoughts on what might have happened to the 2 queens, did I kill her, or sometimes do they just die through the winter for no apparent reason?