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Starting a Nuc from a large cut-out colony

2690 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  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??
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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.
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