Hive still not doing well;

[al.lineberry]

Hive still not doing well; I have two hive one I put in the first of April the second a month later. The first is doing great from what little I know and have asked. The second is not good at all. The first mistake I made was letting my queen out her cage the same day I installed the hive, (reason why is because of my work hour) I think they may have killed her. I check them two or three weeks later no queen and no signs of her. A week after that I took a frame out of my good hive which had egg and lava to see if they would produce a queen. I did see a queen three week ago not sure if she came from the frame I put in (because they did make a queen cell) are if it was the queen that came with the rest, and I just missed her. Still no eggs or lava. My question is should I let nature take its course are try something different to get this hive going? I do want to get this hive up and thriving. Thanks inadvance for any information.

Albee

[Rader Sidetrack]

My question is should I let nature take its course are try something different to get this hive going?

If hive #2 is queenless, letting "nature take its course" means you will eventually be down to one hive. If you want to keep #2 going, try again with adding a frame of eggs/larvae. The general advice is to do this once a week for three weeks in a row, if necessary. Even if hive #2 does somehow have a queen, adding the frame will do no harm.

[jrbbees]

Rader is on the money! go with it!

[al.lineberry]

Thanks for the information.

[robherc]

Albee, can you give us a timeline for these events just showing the approx. date, and what happened that day? I ask this because timing can be everythiing with beekeeping, but I can't seem to "get" when things happened from your original post.

My (probably wrong) reading of your original post sounds like the timeline would be something like:
May 1: got second hive, direct-released queen
May 15-22: hive check, no queen & no eggs/larvae
May 22-29: Added frame of brood
...then...
May 9: Saw queen, think she might have been from added frame of brood

To be sure, I'm not trying to accuse you of giving us bad information, I'm just asking for clarification 'cuz I can't seem to get my brain working chronologically on this one (unfortunately, that's not a terribly uncommon occurence these days)