Two Queen management & supercedure?

[SussexBea]

Hi All,
I've got two hives which haven't really done much this year because of supercedure and swarming etc.
Anyway, I had finally got them requeened and a nice lot of brood but a sudden dearth meant that they were taken off lay and all the brood disappeared.. I fed and moved the hives (this was two weeks ago) and theyre now making stores and the queens are laying again but I was told to run a two queen system rather than combine as there are still quite a lot of bees, albeit ageing fast - so that they recover sooner and can work more efficiently with a view to combining or separating back out later.

Have I done the right thing? I have a 14x12, Q/ex, super with drawn comb, Q/ex, Standard Brood, Q/ex, Super.

The bees have all combined and the queens are laying but the queen in the bottom box is being pretty sporadic and a few of the eggs are on the sides - just a few and only one in each cell - and a couple of small queen cells have appear on the edge of a comb. They are really small and not capped yet. She's this years queen but could it be supercedure again!? They just look really half arsed attempts at queen cells, sticking out rather than down but they did have larvae and royal jelly in.

Any ideas?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

sounds to me as if the queen in the bottom is no more and you have a laying worker

 

[SussexBea]

No more as in gone? I have her. I couldn't see any multiple eggs just they were a bit skeewiff. Maybe she got damaged when I moved the hives.. its was 300 miles!!

How about the 2 queen thing? Is it going to be any stronger than keeping them separate?

 

[dpearce4]

sounds to me like she may have got a little damaged and the bees are deciding weather or not to supersede her but due to the second queen above there are still strong pheromones in the hive.

the style of 2 queen your running seems a little unusual to me, I normally you some sort of horsley board when I do a double queen set up. but im sure I will be told differently by someone who has much more experience in running double queen hives than I have.