Forgive me if this has been brought up in the past, but when I do a search all I am seeing is direct releasing queens in regards to packages. My situation is different because I have two over wintered Nucs who have laying queens, but are weak (about tennis ball sized clusters) so I need to reinforce them. I also have another Nuc that went queenless with about four frames of bees and not a stich of brood/larva/eggs. To be absolutely sure I put a frame of eggs in it to check and they started queen cells. Since we have no drones yet, I destroyed these queen cells, and figured that these hives were made for each other. I'd like to split the queen less Nuc in half and give half to each of my weak Nucs. Normally I'd play it safe, find the queens in the weak hives, cage them, then combine, and release her later so I know she won't be killed. However, the weather is not cooperating with me and I am looking at a stretch of rainy, cooler days and I don't think I should be ripping apart the hive to find the queens to cage them. So my question is, do you think my queens will be safe if I place the two queenless frames in the weak nucs as is (this I can do quickly enough in the weather I have)? My fear is that the weak nuc is too weak to defend their queen should the bees from the queen less frames decide to cause problems. I would think that these bees would be glad to see a laying queen, but on the other hand I really don't want to loose these two queens on a hunch...Any input is appreciated!