I have to be ready to hop on a plane at 4:30 tomorrow, so I don't have much time.
Hive 3 had a new queen on May 15th, I made sure she was released, she wasn't but her servants were all dead on May 18th, so I opened up her sugar cap as there wasn't another queen sitting perched waiting to attack (never know with splits) and the workers looked friendly. She seems to have lived long enough to lay some worker brood which is still capped, some drone brood, and 5 queen eggs, one of which has opened its cap and the other 4 are still capped. Figure the new queen is out on a mating flight, considering setting up 2 mating nucs and relieving hive population from hive 1, the hot one, and hive 2, the stable 1 with the established productive queen. If the queen come backs mated they will kill the queen cells, right?
What do I have to put in a mating nuc? My guess was 2 frames of brood, 2 frames of food, covered with nurse bees and 2 queen cells.