Just went back over this....don't wait. If it's a good queen and they are gonna stay she will be laying now. It will be hard to get a good mated queen the longer you wait. Drones are fewer and fewer now all the way to when they get booted for the winter. If they went queenless you'll hopefully have signs. Depends if they have young enough eggs upon discovery. Now isn't ideal to be needing a queen. If they have eggs and are in queen cups with royal jelly you got a time line. Worst case a queen is roughly a month from we need one to laying. If you run into trouble I have contacts who may still be grafting queens.
On another note two years running I have had a box go plum swarmy in July. Not a regular occurrence or a good thing. Both large swarms from it hit the trees so high I could not get them. Now I'm in the late queen event boat with that box.
