The process seems to be working! Only a few bees come up to where the queens are, but they are "communicating" and seem to be touching, antenea and mouths. I'll assume they are feeding their royal ladies.
Now a related question that I can't seem to find in the books:
About ten days ago, I took capped queen swarm cells from an established colony and placed them in two 5 frame nucs, with frames of brood. Yesterday, upon inspection, I could only find the queen in one of the nucs. There are no eggs in either. The weather has been really lousy (rainy, cool and windy)for over a week and, reportedly, will not change for several days.
Should I consider combining those two nucs and just wait for the one queen to mate and start laying? or I could place one of my purchased queen in the seemingly queenless nuc? If I combine, do I need to use the newspaper method or will the two mini-colonies get along okay by just putting everyone together on a 10 frame box? Any way to be sure there's not a queen hiding somewhere in the queenless nuc, or shouldn't I care - as long as one of them survives, mates and produces.
Dale