You could, your queen could be failing, first, I would check if bees made superseding queen cells. The danger of combining is when you have one or more virgin queens, these are almost not recognizable, then a good hive can go from good to worse.

Thanks for the helpful tip, I will definitely check for that.

Just thought I'd give an update. I went out and checked my hives with a former professional beekeeper, he indicated the bees look very healthy. But the low numbers are troubling, we condensed the hive and I will be testing for american foulbrood in my next hive visit.

Crossing my fingers that its nothing too serious.