[Randall Clark]

Two days my Dad and I cut out what ended up being a very large colony from the floor of an old camper trailer. Probably 7-8 lbs of bees in all. After retrieving the bees and comb, we hauled it home and placed most of the original comb into frames using rubber band to secure them.
During the process, we observed several capped queen cells that were brownish in color at the tip of the cap, so they appeared to be capped for several days. Because of the amount of bees, we decided to divide them up and started a 5-frame Nuc with capped brood and food storage comb, along with the comb that had the queen cells. We put 3 queen cells into the Nuc and moved it to a different location. My basic question, is did we do anything overly stupid, before it becomes too late to re-combine the entire hive? The main hive is doing great, the workers are already gathering pollen and yesterday, I observed a queen on a foundation frame all by herself, so there may be more than 1 queen in this hive at present. If I knew for sure, I would capture one of the queens and introduce her in the Nuc hive. Any thought on a queen being alone, on a sheet of foundation by herself??

 

[Beeslave]

What you did with your nuc will be fine as long as the hatching virgin is able to get mated and make it back before getting picked off by a bird. The queen by herself on the foundation could be a virgin that hatched from one of those other queen cells. Are you positive it was a queen?

 

[Randall Clark]

I'm into my 2nd year of beekeeping, but I'm pretty positive, as she was slightly larger, had a long wasp-like body that was a solid rust-red in color, with no stripes or black color. She also had the shiny, larger black knot behind the head. Looked like a queen to me....

 

[Randall Clark]

I also forgot to mention the Nuc was placed where I have 4 other hives that I know have Drones, so mating shoudn't be a problem. Hopefully the birds will be feasting elsewhere....

 

[Countryboy]

Just make sure you have enough other bees to take care of the queen in the nuc.

A queen by herself on a sheet of foundation can't start a hive.

 

[Randall Clark]

There are approx 1 - 1 1/2 lbs of bees in the Nuc to take care of the capped brood comb and start the colony. The queen was observed in the main large hive that we split after getting the bees home. I just thought it was odd to see a queen by herself on a sheet of undrawn foundation, hence my belief there may be more than 1 queen in the main hive.