Couple of newbee questions - queen cells and lazy workers

[Boom Buzz]

First - queens - when I inspected my hive today I saw what I believe are a couple of queen cups.  Empty queen cells at the bottom of the frame. 

How do you know if they held queens that hatched and swarmed or not?  I didn't see any other evidence they swarmed. 
Are queen cups an early sign they may be getting ready to swarm? 
If I find queen cells can I move the frame/s with the cells to a different hive that I suspect does not have a queen?  (New hive from a cutout last week).  Is this a good strategy to requeen the other hive or is there a more preferred approach?

Next question - on the same hive as above (with the queen cups) I have a deep and a medium for brood.  I placed the medium on about 4 weeks ago when the deep had 8 frames drawn and some progress on the remaining two frames.  The medium frames have very little comb drawn - maybe 1 frame 20% drawn and then a number of sections drawn across frame to frame.  I am using pierco frames/foundations.  Most of the medium frames were covered with bees, but just very little work on drawing out the frames.  The hive seems healthy bee count wise, but the bees seem confused on what to do next.  Is there something I can/should do?  Or am I being impatient?  I have read of others accounts of bees drawing out 8 deep frames in a matter of days, and I expected the medium to be much further along.  I was expecting to need to add another medium.  The bee count and the queen cups made me think I should, but the comb situation made me think otherwise.  Any advise on this is much appreciated!

Thanks

John

[charles]

Colonies make queen cups just in case they need them. If you hold the frame so you can see down into the cup, it's easy to tell if there's something in there like a larva that they have deposited and are feeding to make a new queen. They aren't necessarily an early sign of anything other than a healthy hive. I wouldn't remove queen cups (they'll just make more) or queen cells (many reasons) unless you really know what you're doing. As far as moving the frames with those cells, you have to ask yourself why. Why do you suspect another hive is queenless? Just because you didn't spot the queen doesn't mean there's no queen. Look for eggs. If you see frame after frame of empty brood cells with no eggs, you might have something. If you see eggs, a queen is probably in there. Moving queen cups (empty queen cells) to another hive accomplishes nothing. If it is queenless, you can bet they're already making queen cells. You would only be giving them more work to do in gluing the new frame to the hive. If it's not queenless, what's the point? Moving queen cells (queens growing in a cell) to make a new hive makes sense if beeyard growth is your plan. You might be interrupting a supercedure which the original colony would simply reinitiate on their own. If your other hive is truly queenless, and it has no cells with eggs and no queen cell going, then what it needs is eggs, not queen cups.

Bees draw frames as needed. On your medium box, it sounds like they are not using your foundation well. I would take a hive tool and help them straighten out the comb that they are building from frame to frame. If you can't slice through the attachment points and bend it to stay in one frame, then remove it and let them start over. You might even try removing the foundation and putting in their drawn comb in a foundationless frame, holding it in place with rubber bands if necessary. But you definitely want to stop them from building cross frames.

Bees build comb when they have the room and the need. If a bee comes in with a gut full of nectar and no comb to put it in, she will start to secrete wax on her abdomen which bees around her will remove and use to build comb. See how that works?

[Boom Buzz]

Hey Charles, thanks for the reply.

I wasn't very clear on my queen questions so let me try again.  The hive that I suspect may be queen-less is from a cutout I did Thursday  (two days ago).  I will give this hive a little time to see if there are any signs of the queen - ie., new eggs, or the queen herself.  I hope she is there and all is well.  But in the event she is not, would moving a frame from another hive with a queen cell/s be an appropriate move?  Kind of planning ahead in just case.  I would definitely want to move a capped queen cell, not a queen cup.  Being new at this, and not wanting to disturb the bees on my inspection today, I did not do a thorough looking over of the cup cells.  So there may be eggs/larvae in them or may not.  I will take a closer look at these cells when I go in and do the comb adjustment you suggest. 

I did do a quick inspection of the new hive today as I wanted to see how the combs rubber banded in traveled.  They did okay for the most part.  But I did look for the queen and did not see her.  It is early though and I need to give her and the gang a little time to settle in if she is there..

thanks again

John