I could use a little help...

It means something, but is not a reliable quantitative indicator. Depending on many factors, you can have a fermentation that is not complete, yet has stopped bubbling. Conversely, you can have a fermentation that has completed, but the airlock still burps occasionally.

Of course, if you are two days in, and the bell is pounding the lid of the airlock, that's an indicator of fermentation.

The problem with bubble watching is that it often encourages newbies to panic for no reason.

 

I can accept bubbles as qualitative info, but it isn't very helpful for anything quanitative and cannot be taken as definitively diagnostic. Bubbles can mean yeast activity, or they can reflect degasing due to a physcial cause.

 

There is no hurry. Let this beer complete it's fermentation. Bubbles at 14/minute mean a bubble every 4 seconds or so? Pretty good indication that it is still fermenting.
And do use that secondary--it's a good skill to learn. There are many on here who have figured out a less labor-intensive method of brewing but there is certainly nothing wrong with utilizing a conditioning tank.

 

I LOVE USING A SECONDARY!

So no, op, it wasn't a waste.

 

If the fermenter has a reliable seal and a constant temperature, then a lack of bubbles is an excellent indicator that the yeast have finished consuming the fermentables in the beer. This is one reason that I prefer to ferment in a carboy: a reliable seal is easy to achieve. Because of this I never need to do the "check the gravity three days apart to confirm that the beer is finished fermenting" procedure.

 

If you know your equipment and processes very well this can work, and I will admit to doing this myself (augmented by taste test). But not recommended for beginners IMO.

 

I personally only use secondary for bulk aging, souring, oaking, etc. The majority of beers do not need it.
For the OP: in the cases that you do need to secondary, you still need to wait until primary fermentatin is over - no bubbling from the airlock (which as others said, it's not the be all and end all of indicators, but it can be useful to guage) and the gravity is constant for several days in a row. It's not as critical to know the OG, though it is useful to be able to calculate the alcohol content and get an idea when it's done (if when you test that FG, if it's still at 1.020 for instance, there's a problem; if it's under 1.010 you're probably done)
For this case, I would leave the beer be for at least another week, then pop the top to check gravity and dry-hop. It isn't BAD if you want to transfer to secondary for that, but you do risk oxidation and infection by transferring the beer. I would leave it be, dump the new hops in, then leave for another week. Check the gravity then (it should be the same) then go into bottling routine.