Drone layer. Did I do the right thing?

[Beeconcerned]

I have had 2 casts for about six weeks hived on 5 frames each in 2 brood boxes on top of each other with entrances facing different ways and a crown board with mesh covered holes between them. When I checked them today One was queenright with eggs and capped brood and the other had either an unmated queen or laying worker There was only a patch of capped drone cells and grubs, which was not continuous but also not too spread out.
I shook this box out at the bottom of the garden, put the frames from it into the the bottom (queenright) box and put the empty box back on top to keep the second entrance for now.

Did I do the right thing, and is there anything else I should do now? Thanks.

 

[Beeconcerned]

I forgot to say that it looks like the 2 colonies merged ok and I can't see any fighting or dead bees so far.

 

[Mike a]

Sounds ok to me, I wouldn't of bothered to shake them out just removed the crown board divider and replaced it with a sheet of newspaper and blocked the upper entrance.

 

[Beeconcerned]

Thanks Mike. I went for a shake because I wasn't sure if I had a laying worker or a queen who had missed her mating because of the bad weather. I didn't want 2 queens fighting in case the good one lost. I didn't destroy the patch of drone, but I don't suppose that matters.

 

[Midland Beek]

but I don't suppose that matters.

No, that bit of drone brood is not going to matter.

But probably the right way to do what you have done is to have gone through the colony with the duff queen, and then to have killed her, after which you could have united using the newspaper method.

There are differences between laying workers and drone laying queen. With a DLQ eggs are on the cell bases, but not so with laying workers that have shorter abdomens.

If that swarm was hopelessly queenless all the bees may well have joined the queenright swarm by now.