I'm going to show my newness and ask what an OB hive is? No, they are not in a nuc. Her (Anne) and I purchased our packages from the same place, picked them up together. She bought 1 package, I bought 2 packages. Our bees are at different locations. Mine are doing fantastic. Her's are the bees described here. She is not computer savy, I've asked her to join and she tried a few times but failed (for a reason unknown to me). So, we both purchased the same hives even to place them in, a basic beginners hive w/SBB and paraffin dipped. The only difference between her hive and mine when we started was that she seemed to have a higer percentage of dead bees at the bottom (I wish I could quantify this, but I can't as I don't remember, from now on I will start paying more attention to this) and she used a top trough feeder and I used a 1 gallon pale feeder. They were 2# Italian packages. They were installed on Apr 20th. Last week I added on a second deep to one of mine and I'll probably need a second deep on the 2nd hive in the next week or so.
She only has the one hive and I don't want to be stingy but I am not sure if I can take a frame or two from my hives and put in hers, would I be risking my hives for the winter given this was their first year and they were only 2# packages to start? Also, how would we transport the frames to another location, being new beeks, we don't have extra equipment laying around. I am sure she will be disappointed if her hive fails this year, but she understands it's part of the learning experience. I guess the thing we would really like to understand is why her hive failed so maybe we can do something about it next time around if we see the same symptoms. I am sure this is hard to judge not knowing what % of the bees were dead on arrival. That may be the crucial piece of information we do not have :-/
Jeremy