I have two hives that are struggling to the point that I am confident one will not make it through winter and reasonably certain the other will have issues. They still may lay in stores, but one of the hives simply will not for some reason move out of the lower deep into the upper medium to draw out frames despite my best efforts to coax them to do so. I think a combine is in order.
I can take the two deeps and stack them with newspaper between and use the few frames of drawn out stores that the stronger of the weak hives has built to fortify another hive that a few undrawn frames in its upper deep. The question surrounds the queens. Do I simply combine and let them fight it out, pinch one and let the other continue, or pinch them both and order a new queen? If I were to pinch one, it would be the one from the weaker of the two struggling hives I am presuming, but perhaps this, too, is an erroneous assumption on my part.
You can do whichever you like, but it's probably wiser to pick what you think is the better of the two queens.