Just read through this. With regrets, it sounds like you killed your queen. It happens, take action, recover, move on.
wrt the comment/debate about waiting for a queen to be raised:
An attempt at summarizing what Ed is saying that at this point of the season any hive intended to make the winter, it must be a fully functioning hive - RIGHT NOW. Complete with laying queen, minimum 4 frames full of brood of all stages, plenty of stores, and a box nearly overflowing with bees. If it does not meet ALL of that criteria, it is a hive that is already dead but the bees in there just do not know it yet. Or perhaps they do and it is the beekeeper who is missing the signs.
At this point in the season in the northern hemisphere there is NO WAY a beekeeper intent on wintering will be waiting on queen cells and one of them to get mated. If you do not have a queen going full out right now, you have nothing. "Take your winter losses in the fall". Either install a fully mated queen immediately along with 3+ frames of fully capped emerging brood, OR tear the hive down right now and use all of its bees and resources to boost your other colonies. (combine).
You are wasting time, dragging out the inevitable, and hurting the bees in that hive with undue stress as well as not supporting your other weak hives by not tearing this one apart to give them what they need. Stressed bees become sickly bees.
If you are dead set intent on trying to get a queen(s) out of this. Then suggest to still rip apart and tear down the hive for resources, but take one frame with a few QC's and setup a 2 frame nuc. Let that nuc go for producing a queen, while not stressing a whole hive of bees over it. Get the rest of the bees and resources into new welcoming homes (combine).
The same principle applies to the other hive that you say has a cripple mediocre queen. If you do not have a good queen, you do not have anything, you have nothing. Kill her now. Tear the hive down, use the bees and resources to bolster all of the other hives. Take your winter losses now.
The time is critical. The 2018 bee season is over. We have no time to dawdle or procrastinate or hold out on a hive to come around, it won't. Look after your bees. Looking after bees means help them as much as you can wherever you can. It also often means heavy handed tough love. Culling the weak to promote only brilliance in the others. It means stop unnecessary stress on a colony by ending it. By doing so proactively before the resources are depleted, there are gains! Done soon enough the resources can be used to bolster the rest of the apiary. The end result is instead of a bunch of weak-mediocre hives and suffering heavy winter losses, there are fewer but excellent strong healthy hives and no winter losses.
Hope that helps, in some way, with a push in the right direction with this.