My wife and I began our first colony on March 22nd with a 3 lb package. They are now quite strong with one deep box of brood and two medium boxes of brood and two boxes of honey. We're very happy with how that colony is doing.
We started a new colony three weeks ago today with a 3 lb package. Everything seemed to be looking good for the first week. Comb was being drawn and there looked to be eggs laid. However, when I checked the hive on day 15 expecting to find capped brood, there was none. Well, I take that back. There was one capped drone cell and three queen cups. It was difficult to see into the queen cups because of cloudy conditions, but I could see that at least one of those cups was empty for sure. I searched every frame carefully and found no queen. We called our bee supplier to see if we could get a new queen ASAP. In the mean time, we took a frame of brood from our first hive and place it in the new hive. Three days latter we heard back from our supplier and were able to get a new queen yesterday -- day 20. When I went into the hive to install the new queen cage, I checked on the progress of those three queen cups I'd seen last week. Two looked to have been abandoned, but one had been drawn out and there was definitely a larva in it.
So, there's my dilemma. I've placed the new queen in the hive and opened the candy end of the cage for the bees to release her. I'm assuming that will occur probably tomorrow. They were like iron fillings to a magnet when I put the cage in there yesterday. Should I go ahead and kill the larva they are making? Should I wait and see? Will the new queen take care of that larva? Any suggestions?