I've got a couple varieties of Red Raspberries and I treat them all the same. I cut everything to almost the ground in late fall (early spring is fine) so that last year's stems are only about 2-3 inches tall.

I get a light summer and heavier fall crop that often extends to almost Thanskgiving.

~Chills

What I do with the summer types is just prune the canes out that are dead or dying. You are supposed to prune them out earlier as you mention, but I never did that (too busy) and it always worked for me. If you want to do it that way then just wait until they are going (or not) in spring and cut out the dead bits.

Scott

Hi Chills-
That's fine for all everbearing (fall) raspberries. And, that's what I do with most of my raspberries too. But, if you do that with summer bearing raspberries, you'll never get a crop. They only fruit on the 2nd year's wood. With summber bearing raspberries, you should treat them as Scott has mentioned.
-Glenn

Beware that Raspberries are notoriously suc. to several virus diseases, so you take a chance when transplanting older canes--- especially from older farms. It is probably OK to put a few in a garden but don't plant them next to your good Raspberries, cause if they are infested with virus, it will spread into all of your plants.
I'd pay the extra money and get certified plants, or grow them from seeds.

You seem to be describing summer bearing raspberries which only bear on the second year canes. After they bear, those canes will die and can be pruned out. If not prunee out at all, you'll get a patch with lots of dead canes to work around, but you can remove them at any time, or just leave them and when the patch gets too thick to work, transplant a new patch and mow/roto till the old one in.

It seems unlikely that you would only have 2 canes which are still alive unless you removed all new growth last year. If you didn't remove all new growth last year, I would wait to prune out the old canes until after the raspberries leaf out in the spring, then remove all canes that don't leaf out. Look them over carefully and you will soon be able to identify the dead ones even in the winter. I never have desire or time to remove the 2nd year canes after fruiting in the fall, so I do it in the spring when I'm eager to get in the garden but it is still too cold and nothing is growing yet--plus, there is no foliage to hide the canes in the spring.

Each year, the raspberries put up lots of new growth from the ground and will often try to expand their area. The new canes are the ones that will produce fruit next year--so just remove the ones trying to escape the area where you want your raspberry patch. Unless weather or other problems prevent fruit production, your summer bearing raspberries will fruit every year, but on canes that grew new the prior year.