Am I Too Late To Unite?

[Frisbee]

One of my hives the queen stopped laying in Septemberish. My mentor came to find the queen for me in October to mark her, as I wanted to requeen in spring, he picked up on a lack of young brood and told me to keep an eye on it and he was going to unite two of his colonies so I could possibly have one of those queens, well then the weather turned. I spoke to him on Friday and he said the weather was going to be good on Saturday and I was to have a quick look to see if she'd started again. Well there was no brood at all but it was absolutely heaving with stores and plenty of bees. I then had a quickie in the hive with my new queen as I wanted to put some polysyrene end boards in. I was horrified to discover hardly any stores in there at all despite being fed nearly as well as the previous one. I say nearly because they didn't take the syrup quite as quickly, so some nights I didn't have to refill as it hadn't been taken. Anyway I took 2 frames of food from the good one, but now am worried. I don't want to lose the colony with the new queen.
Ideas please

Frisbee

 

[Hivemaker.]

Has the colony without brood got a queen?sometimes older queens have stopped laying and if the hive is very strong they could be okay.If you are worried about stores in the other one feed them some soft fondant on top of a queen excluder,using a super as an eke,with the crown board on top,leave the fondant with the bottom exposed and the top covered in polythene,they will eat this as they need it.

 

[Frisbee]

Has the colony without brood got a queen?sometimes older queens have stopped laying and if the hive is very strong they could be okay.

Yes it was an artificial swarm I made earlier in the year, they have been fine, I've searched for the queen every time I went through them but failed to find her, and if I didn't make myself clear in my first post, my mentor came over in Qctober to find her and mark her so I could requeen in spring as they are a touch nippy.

Frisbee