I have two hives and I re-queened one today, a cordovan queen. I used a queen introduction frame for her and added some brood frames from my other hive. (The frames were far from full of brood!)
BUT, now my other hive, (from which I removed two brood frames) which has good population and loads of honey, appears to have a problem as well. On most frames, the brood cells were very sporadic, I could only locate a very, very small amount of larvae, and even though I was not wearing my glasses, I could have sworn there were some cells with 2 or 3 eggs in them. I should mention, there are two deeps and two medium supers on the hive. The bottom deep has the sporadic brood on the frames, the second deep is full of honey. The next, (super) is full of honey, and the top super has no comb even started and it has been there two weeks.
Lordy, Lordy! Do I need a second queen?
My main concern is if there is a queen in the hive, (just doing a very poor job), will the hive accept a new queen over her? Will they kick her out if she isn't laying well? This is only a 2nd year hive, so I would think the original queen would still be productive. That is, if she is even alive.
Unsure what to do!
Thanks, Rich