Best time to "borrow" brood from donor Nuc.

[pistolpete]

I am trying a variation on the two queen method.  I have a Nuc that is currently at 6 frames of bees (my best queen from last year).   The parent hive next to them is at about 4 frames of brood and 10 frames of bees (new queen still getting up to speed).   My plan is to start pulling capped brood from the Nuc and adding it to the parent hive to make them produce lots of honey. 

So the question is: how strong should the Nuc be before I start pulling brood from it.   I've already pulled about 4 frames of brood from this nuc over the last couple of weeks to put in Nucs for sale, but I think I may have pushed them a bit too hard. 

Also what is a good amount of brood to pull?  I'm thinking 1 frame of capped brood every 5 days.

[apisbees]

Keep the domer nuc the size you want and pullany extra brood and bees.
If you want it to remane 5 frames of brood you need to leave 7+ frames of bees. If you want the nuc to be 6 frames of bees keep pulling brood and placing in empty frames for the queen to lay. A queen will lay a frame in 2 to 3 days. So you should be pulling 2 frames every 5 days and placing back every 10 days 1 frame that is sealed and ready to emerge.
Hhe same principle of maintaining a queen cell starter but in reverse. If you follow.

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[brooksbeefarm]

What your doing sounds about right to me Pete, Then there's the question of what you want to do with the nuc before winter? Jack

[pistolpete]

I'll decide in the fall what to do with the Nuc.  The plan is to let them build to a 10 frame colony at the end of August and winter them on top of another hive.  But if one of my hives is looking sluggish in the fall, I may just combine.