Hi Everyone,
So this is my first year with 2 hives. One is doing great and I just added another medium super as a brood box. Unfortunately the other has been a problem from the start. There was a queen mixed in with the workers, so when I released the caged queen, she disappeared. There were eggs, larva and capped brood much earlier than expected so that's how we figured there was a queen mixed in with the workers. This queen also disappeared but the girls were industrious and we found lots of queen cups and eventually another queen (last sighted on 21 May). This was exciting and we gave her some time to go on her mating flight. There were no eggs last week and today we found 2 -3 eggs in some of the cells - there were also cells with larva in various stages. None of the cells are capped yet so I can't confirm that these are all drones yet but I'm guessing the workers are laying. It looks like they are forming some queen cells again. I took 2 frames with brood (both capped and uncapped) from the good hive and add these to the queenless one in hopes of suppressing the workers from laying. And maybe they will finish making another queen.
I know it's likely that I will lose the hive but I would like to try everything before writing it off. Should I let them try to make another queen since they've started trying already ? Or is it worth buying another mated queen (if I can find one) to get things going again? i want the colony to be strong enough to make it through the winter.
Any advice or experiences you can share is much appreciated!! Many thanks!