[Oldtimer]

Agreed, if there is still brood in the hives, it is not that long since the laying queen left, you have to give the new queens time to get mated and start laying. It does not happen in 24 hours.

Wait till all brood is hatched. Then wait another week. Then you can pronounce the hive queenless if there is still not a laying queen. But i think there will be, long as you don't mess with them too much.

 

[Oldtimer]

If the scattered capped drone cells in the first hive were in worker cells, you have a problem, although that there were no uncapped drone larvae is a good sign. But probably the capped drones were in drone cells, which take 25 days to hatch. The worker larvae which take 21 days to hatch have all hatched, so that gives you an accurate time frame for when your laying queen left. (More than 21 days ago, less that 25 days ago).

If the queen cells hatched a few days after the laying queen left the virgin you saw may be between 15 to 20 days old, roughly. Too soon to be concerned she is not laying yet, but she should start laying any time soon.

The other hive sounds like it swarmed a bit later, so the queen in that one should be a bit later.

Please keep us updated, will be interesting to see how this works out.