Failing hive..

[alfred]

One of my hives is failling.  :'( 

I picked up this swarm in early June. On the 10th of July they swarmed or at least it looked to me like they were the ones who swarmed, my boxes are close together.  The swarm, I captured and they are doing fine, a little slow to build but otherwise fine. But the hive that they swarmed from is seriously struggling.

The next day this is what I found:
Top Box  None drawn
Middle Box
All drawn
Lots of brood
3 open queen cells
2 capped swarm cells
3 capped supersedure cells (based on location)
1 emerging queen

Bottom box
All drawn
3 brood
3 queen cells capped
1 queen cell open
So I left all as is and figured that this confirmed where the swarm came from.

The next several inspections showd no significant change. Then on 8/9 I saw lots of brood in second box but still no more comb in top box. The same on 8/16 I found brood but no expansion. I decided that they didnt like the pf120's and I switched thenm out for foundationless in the empty top box.

This week I found almost no brood in a very spotty pattern, literally one here and one there, no new comb and no larve or eggs. Little or no nectar or pollen either.

I guess that I should ad that I have not seen queen either since the first day that I saw one emerge and the other  Queen cells. I'll be honest and say that I have had little luck finding queens in general this year, so I have been settling for signs of them. They have long since cleared out all signs of the queen cells and fixed up the comb.

So I am not sure quite what to do. I am leaning toward combining with another hive. Or shaking them out and splitting the comb to several other hives. I have thought of giving them lots of brood to see if they will raise a new queen, but I fear it may be too late in the year for them to make it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Alfred

[Kathyp]

your brood is worker brood or drone brood?  one here and one there of drone brood sounds like laying workers.

what is your flow like?  no flow will sometimes make a queen back off laying and they will not build out supers.  you will usually still find a bit of egg and brood.

it is probably to late to let them raise their own queen.

regardless, it sounds like they would have a hard time making it through winter.  if you take the hive away from the others and shake it out they will fly back and join other hives.  you can save the comb for next year.  make sure you have something to cover your hive as you shake out the frames and take an empty box out (with cover) into which you may put the cleared frames.

[AR Beekeeper]

If you have a frame of eggs/small larvae in another colony remove it and give it to our "queenless " colony.  If in two or three days there are queen cells being built then you can be sure the colony does not have a virgin in it.  If there are no queen cells after three days there is a queen that has not yet started to lay. 

If the colony is queenless you can cut the cells and requeen with a mated queen, leave the cells and hope for a successful hatch/mating of a virgin or do a newspaper joining with another colony.