I think if I were not in FL, I would just let these two hives bee but Africanized Bees is a reality. If these hives were in a rural area, may not be as big of a deal but I am in a neighborhood with 6 other houses within 60 feet of my hives.
Big Hive (for me)
This hive is one deep & one med brood and one honey super. I found one cluster of queen cells toward the top of the frame, about 4 in the med brood box. They were not capped but I could see larve older than 6 days... In the deep brood box I found larve about 6 days old, but did not find any eggs.
In this area, if the queens emerge and mate, it is very likely that she will mate with at least some AHB and I need to avoid that. So if they are indeed queenless, then I need to get a queen.
What should my next steps be?
Should I destroy those cells?
Medium Hive
This hive has been queenless for at least a month. I had a laying worker. Last week, I put in some frames with larve and eggs (I think). Then I shook all the bees off about 40 feet away hoping hte laying worker would not make it back. I then introduced a new queen. They released the queen within a few days. Today, rather than eggs and larve, I find 15 to 20 queen cells and most are capped. These cells are mostly in the middle of the frames and some to the top. None at the bottom.
I did not find any eggs from possibly a working layer, but understand I am still new, and processing all of this during inspection is still not second nature.
What should my next steps bee?
Kill the queen cells and try introducing a queen again?
Will the bees try to produce a queen from working layer eggs?
-Added:
My wife just had a thought. I just made a split from the big hive on Tuesday. I wonder if I accidentally took the queen from it? Maybe I could combine it back?
I also have one other queenright hive that is one deep and I could combine it with one of these. I don't really want to my # of hives, but I would rather have a chance of a fall harvest from a couple good hives than virtually nothing from 4 weak hives.