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Responding to the original question - you can indeed make up a mating nuc like that, but you will likely have better average results with at least 3 medium (or even deep) frames - 1 brood, 1 honey / pollen, 1 drawn. Another advantage is that you have more time to deal with them before the colony outgrows the box. Oops...brood goes in the middle.
A 4-frame nuc or even a 5-frame nuc gives you even more time to deal with the growth. I try to use 5-frames if the Spring nectar flow is in full swing, 3- or 4-framers after that. With only 2 frames, you have about one to two weeks before you have to transfer them to a larger house, with 3 frames, you may get 3 weeks, unless the nectar flow is going strong - it could get brood-bound in two weeks if she happens to be a real laying machine. 4 or 5-frame setups make sense if you are running lots of hives.
You probably won't get as much weird behavior in a 3-frame nuc as is a mini mating nuc - by weird, I mean swarming, superceding, and absconding in the mini mating nucs.
Another thing to consider is making up some "hive dummies". These are frames of wood that take up the space of a frame of comb. The bees have to heat less volume, and you can easily set them up in even a full box and "expand" their chamber by taking out a dummy frame and adding a frame of foundation or an empty frame as they need it. During that part of Spring when nights are still cold, the management of "dead space" that the bees have to heat up is the real art of beekeeping, and hive dummies are a great solution to dead space volume management.
A 4-frame nuc or even a 5-frame nuc gives you even more time to deal with the growth. I try to use 5-frames if the Spring nectar flow is in full swing, 3- or 4-framers after that. With only 2 frames, you have about one to two weeks before you have to transfer them to a larger house, with 3 frames, you may get 3 weeks, unless the nectar flow is going strong - it could get brood-bound in two weeks if she happens to be a real laying machine. 4 or 5-frame setups make sense if you are running lots of hives.
You probably won't get as much weird behavior in a 3-frame nuc as is a mini mating nuc - by weird, I mean swarming, superceding, and absconding in the mini mating nucs.
Another thing to consider is making up some "hive dummies". These are frames of wood that take up the space of a frame of comb. The bees have to heat less volume, and you can easily set them up in even a full box and "expand" their chamber by taking out a dummy frame and adding a frame of foundation or an empty frame as they need it. During that part of Spring when nights are still cold, the management of "dead space" that the bees have to heat up is the real art of beekeeping, and hive dummies are a great solution to dead space volume management.
