I'm not sure if I might have a laying worker situation. A little background first. Through the middle of June I had a hive swarm three times in a row. So, I split the hive on June 20th, giving each a frame with at least one queen cell and frames with brood. Due to lousy weather and other things out of my control, I just checked them both for the first time today. One hive probably has a new queen. I didn't see her, but there was a lot of new brood in a very uniform pattern and I saw many VERY young larvae. The other hive had only spotty brood. There were a large percentage of drone capped cells and only a small area on one frame of capped worker cells. The rest of the brood frames were filled with mostly open nectar. The only eggs I could find were 2 eggs in one open queen cup located on the bottom of one frame. There were a couple other queen cups but I couldn't see into them because workers were covering them. Questions: Do I have laying workers? If so did I catch it early enough that placing a brood frame with eggs from another hive may correct it?(Which I did do) It's been 17 days since I did the split, but it's been longer since the hive has had a laying queen because of the 3 swarms in a row.
You will always see a few drone cells scattered about. Virtually no worker cells. Maybe some queen cells. Probably multiple eggs, especially in drone cells and on top of pollen.
A frame of open brood from another hive every week for three weeks is almost foolproof.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm