One queen cell....

[L Daxon]

Last Saturday I hived a small swarm I was pretty sure was queenless.  So I put two frames of brood from one of my other hives in to the new hive, hoping I had gotten eggs or young enough larva -- my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be and I can never see eggs any more--hoping they would raise a queen, if needed.

Sure enough when I got into the swarm hive today there was one capped queen cell on the side of one of the brood frames.  Issue 1:  My question is, is one queen cell enough? Should I take another frame or two with larva/eggs from another hive to have them raise a back up queen in case there is something wrong with the first one.

Also during my inspection, I was a bit surprised/disappointed that it didn't look like the girls had really drawn out any comb in the past week.  I had new plastic frames/foundation and it hardly looks like they have touched it.  I have new plastic frames in 3 hives this spring and the bees are mostly building between the frames rather than filling them out. Issue #2: Should I just give up on the plastic and put in wood frames w/wired foundation?  I was trying to keep plastic frames in all the brood chambers  and wood frames in all the honey supers (I crush and strain) so I could tell what frames (the plastics ones) were on any given hive when chemicals were used (I used apiguard last fall).  Since most of the chemicals say not to use during the honey flow, I can always tell that my wood frames, used only in the honey supers, were never on the hive during chemical treatment with no chance of residual chemical contamination.
But my girls just don't seem to be too accepting of the plastic.

[Bee-Bop]

I use all plastic and have had no problem, course with all plastic they have no choice !

I do coat the plastic with an additional coat of wax !

Bee-Bop

[sc-bee]

Alot of folks find they have to brush on additional wax as stated above to get the bees to accept it. Place some left over comb in a small crock pot and melt it. Brush it on with a small brush. Ask others if the crock pot will get the wax hot enough for a fire hazard?
I'm not sure :-\

I don't run plastic but know folks that do it this way.

[Bee-Bop]

I use a crock pot and a 4 in. foam roller,

On medium frames 1 very lite swipe of wax on each side 10-15 seconds per frame.

I have over 600 plastic frames, will order more this winter.

No fire hazard from crock pot heating.

Bee-Bob

[Brian D. Bray]

Issue 1:  You have one queen cell because either the bees consider that sufficient or they only found one hatched egg that rated sufficient quality to become a queen.  Give a choice of a quantity of 3 day (hatched) eggs the bees will always pick what they fdetermine are the healthiest ones to become queens.  Which is why a bee chosen queen is always better than a grafted queen, the bees are much better than the beekeeper at choosing the best eggs to make queens out of.  The exception to this when the bees have only a limited amout of eggs from which to choose.

Issue 2: Mixing wood and plastic frames in the same box almost always produces the situation you discribe.  The cure is, as noted by others, applying more wax to the frames and then spraying them with a little simple syrup when you install them to lure the bees onto the frames.  Once they get onto the frames they will work them.  However, bees will only occupy as many frames as there are bees in the hive to cover every cell of comb during the overnight cluster.  This can only be changed with population growth or frame manipulation
To force grow drawn comb, move the outside (storage) combs over and replace with an frame of foundation.  The bees will move off of the storage frames and begin working on the new frames since the new frames now occupy the space of the nighttime cluster of the bees.  This provides them with an enlarged brood chamber so that the queen can produce a larger amount of brood.  Continue this process until all the frames in the box are drawn out, or they are working on the last 2 frames.  then add a super moving the 2 storage frame up to the upper box with 2 undrawn frames between the storage frames. 
Once the lower brood box is fully occuppied by bees they will then move up to the upper box and begin building combs on the 2 frames located between the 2 storage frames.  The queen is then most likely to begin laying eggs in those 2 frames, enlarging the brood chamber into 2 boxes, and the hive will be capable of taking care of itself from there on out with the necessary monitoring and super additions by the beekeeper. 

[L Daxon]

Brian,
I found your answers very helpful. 
On issue one, i don't think there was but one or two larva that I really saw, probably no eggs on the frames I inserted. Some capped brood so I was hoping there were eggs close by. Probably not.  Guess I could put in another frame of with more larva.  But I am glad to know that they will do a better job than me at picking future queens.
On issue two, I brushed a bunch of the swarm into the new hive, then put in the two frames of bees and brood from the old hive.  When I checked Saturday I suspicioned that most of the swarm bees had returned to the old hive   (they are about 15 feet apart) and the only bees that stayed behind were enough to cover/work the two brood frames.  i think that is one reason they wasn't a lot of evidence of comb being drawn out.  I just had a bunch of nurse bees on the two frames.  I am hoping to get a swarm call (last two have been cutouts and I don't do them) and was going to use someone elses swarm to build up the population. 
I will roll on some more wax on the plastic frames soon.  I get the problem with mixing plastic and wood, but I usually don't mix the two.  All they have at first is plastic to work on.  I only put on the wood frames (I am experimenting with foundationless) when the honey flow is on and the hive is strong enough to actually be laying in surplus honey.  Unless I collect a really big swarm or two here real soon, I doubt if this swarm/split hive will actually need a honey super this year.
Thanks