After leaving it alone for a while, I went back to hive #1. This was the large swarm I hived on April 21st. Early on I was concerned the queen had died or absconded. I saw her when I hived the bees and gently put her inside the top board. 1.5 weeks later I had 5 frames of drawn comb, nectar, pollen, no eggs. At a little over 2 weeks I saw about 5-10 eggs total. Yesterdays inspection showed lots of eggs. Singles, doubles, triples, most all at the bottom of the cell. I didn't spend a lot of time in it, but I didn't think I saw any capped workers, only capped drone cells scattered about in different locations. Developing larvae, some have more than 1 larvae in a cell. The bees are very calm and seem happy. There are about 5 seams of bees. I was concerned because I didn't spot any worker brood. That is until I started looking at the pictures, and maybe I see a couple? Also, during all of the inspections I have performed I have yet to see the queen, and I have been looking.
I'd love to hear suggestions from the experienced crowd on what you would suggest. I'm going to try to attach some pictures showing the frames and eggs.
https://postimg.cc/gallery/rRf19zV/c3d9f1da**UPDATE**
One very important piece of information that I accidently left out was that around week 2.5 I added a frame of young brood with eggs to help boost the colony and see if they would raise a queen, which they did not. So here is what I have currently:
From what I can tell it ALL looks like capped drone. There are 4-5 capped cells that look smaller and flatter like worker brood
Laying pattern is fairly consistent
Still have many cells with 2 eggs, some with 3, but also many with just one! All eggs are at the bottom of the cell, no cells with more than 4, no eggs on the side of cells anywhere
Bees obviously aren't growing and expanding, but also aren't really drawing anymore comb, just sort of existing. Plus I still can't locate a queen
Here is my dilema; based on the single eggs, laying pattern, calmness of the bees I feel like I may have a drone laying queen and just can't find her..?
On the other hand, based on the multiple eggs and the amount of drones, coupled with the fact that I have suspected this hive to be hopelessly queenless for many weeks makes me think I may have laying workers.
I have a small swarm that I hived a few weeks ago. They are still small, but looking great! Beautiful laying pattern with nice solid oval of capped workers, honey at the top. Beautiful plump queen scurrying around. I suspect they will grow to be a nice colony over the summer. I would love to combine this one with my subject colony somehow. Only I don't want to risk my queen being killed.
Is there a good option to merge? Could I shake all the bees out of the "suspect" hive, move my small hive over to the original location of the "suspect" hive in the hopes that flying bees will move in?
I feel like a newspaper merge is probably risky. I hate to let the "suspect" hive continue down the road to destruction, is still has a good amount of bees (about 5 good seams)