I just inspected my 2nd hive. It is a new hive with a 5 frame nuc installed in early May. The bees are making comb and honey, but there was absolutely no brood. No capped brood and no visible uncapped brood. I spotted the queen and she looked healthy. I also saw several queen cells, a couple of which were uncapped. So do I have a nonlaying queen? Do I have a new queen that just hasn’t started laying? Should I replace the queen?
As best I can work out is that you have a non laying queen. What I would do in this situation is find the queen again, squash her & leave her in the hive, break all the queen cells down, before introducing a frame of BIAS, making sure it includes worker eggs. Then after 6 days, do another inspection to see if there is emergency queen cells on the frame of BIAS. Also check the other brood frames for signs of a laying worker. If no emergency queens on that frame of BIAS, repeat the process. If you find signs of a laying worker (drone brood in worker comb), you may need to repeat the frame of BIAS several times until the colony decides to make a new queen.
Bear in mind that the colony will be low on nurse bees, therefore you might need to introduce some nurse bees with that frame of BIAS, or be prepared that you may not find emergency queens on the first frame. With the presence of nurse from the first frame, you will be more likely to find emergency cells on the second frame. A good rule to remember is that it takes 500 nurse bees to feed one queen larvae.
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Thanks for the response. What is BIAS?
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Frame of BIAS = Brood In All Stages
The advantages of using such a frame are many. First you give the weak colony eggs and young larvae to make a new queen. Second you give them uncapped brood and their pheromones will suppress the tendency to develop laying workers. Third you give them capped brood which will soon emerge and start working as nurse bees for any new queen. Win, win, win! 
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