New package, spotty brood, queen cell

[Brenda]

One of my brother's newly installed packages has a spotty brood pattern, few capped brood, and they had started a queen cell in the middle of a frame. I'm assuming the queen isn't up to snuff and they are wanting to make a new queen.
My question is this. He has another package that's going gangbusters and has lots of capped brood. Should we take a frame of brood from that hive and put it in the other to help keep them from falling behind?
Thanks.

[suttonbeeman]

Sounds like you got a queen that didnt get mated well. If the package came out of the Southeast US that is a good possability as all the rain made mating difficult. The spotty brood pattern and the queen cell indicate a queen problem> I would call the producer and see if he would replace the bad one and send you a new one. If so kill the old queen, wait 24 hrs destroy all queen cells and put in the new queen....wait 3 days before you remove the candy cork and check for more queen cells...if none take out the cork and let bees release her. If there is some cells...destroy them and take out cork. I doubt if they can raise a good queen and you may have to give them some brood from the other one after your new queen gets estabilished.

[Brenda]

The package came from Georgia. We'll check on them again this weekend, and if it's the same, I'll see if my brother wants to call the supplier.