Waiting on a queen

Hive2 was queenless but had queen cells in it. On my next inspection I saw that two of these had hatched and the others looked like they had been torn down by the workers. I also think I saw a very small virgin queen on one frame so all looked to be going well on the road to a queenright hive.  However I still didn't see any eggs or uncapped brood. I checked the hive again a week later, still no eggs or brood. I did some searching online apparently it can take 30 days for the queen to get mated and start laying. I know there's drones about for her to mate with because I have the other hive with it's company drones and I happen to know there's someone else keeping bees a few streets away and two hives in a wildlife project on the edge of Pearson Park so I'm pretty sure she'll be able to mate if we get some good weather.

After 30 days there may be no young bees left in the hive to tend the brood -although to be fair that didn't seem to have been a problem when hive1 was queenless for so long before requeening. Anyway I decided to pull a frame with uncapped brood and eggs from hive1 and place it in hive2. I picked out a commercial frame covered in capped stores to give the bees in hive1 in exchange for their brood. Thinking about it later I realised this was a mistake. What I'd done was effectively increase the hive2 population whilst at the same time decreasing their food store. What I should've done was put a new commercial frame into hive1, remove one the emptier national frame from hive2 and put it in the national box currently supering hive1. I'll know for next time

Here's a picture of some bees by the way. They're on a piece of wood I used to cover the holes in the crownboard whilst not in use. I'm told that both my colonies are buckfast bees, however I've noticed some of them (one in top left and bottom middle) look a little dark to me so I may be wrong but I suspect their queen may have met a black bee drone or two on her mating flight.

Bees