Nuc with no queen

[VermontHoneyBee]

I am a reborn beekeeper.  When I was a young kid, my family had approx. 100 hives in Portugal.  I helped care for them and then I had no trouble.  Now, add a few decades, and I will not say how many, and I lost all the confidence. 

I started with 6 nucs.  One of the nucs did not have a queen.  I knew it did not because all the combs where loaded with honey and there were no nurse bees or young larvae.  I still loaded the nuc thinking I must be wrong.  Then I noticed that the hive was very loud for the next two days.  I checked for queen and no queen or eggs.  I waited another day and then I introduced a new queen.  Immediately the hive quite down and they seemed to love the new queen. 

The queen is in a cage and my concern is that all the bees in the hive are foragers.  No nurse bees.  Will introducing a new queen still help?

Thanks

[BeeMaster2]

JR,
The bees will do what they need to. Not as well as nurse bees but they can revert back. Is the Nuc full of bees? You may need to add a frame or two of brood to help them out, as a mater of fact, I recommend it.
I would talk to the seller. He should replace it.
Jim

[VermontHoneyBee]

The seller was not very helpful.  The other seller, which sold me nucs with no issues, actually donated a queen to me (he was very closed to my house).

I did ask the seller to give me a comb of emerging brood and I am picking that up today.  That comb will have nurse bees.

The nuc had a lot of bees and they were all collecting honey.  The 5 frames weighted close to 50 pounds.  All honey.  Insane.

[BeeMaster2]

Sounds good. I would not buy bees from him again.
Jim

[VermontHoneyBee]

No kidding.  I was very disappointed.  They are large too. 

The problem is where I live.  Not a lot of people selling nucs and unless you get on a list really early, like January 1st, there is nothing for you.  I am in Vermont.

The other seller will get all my business from now on for sure

[beepro]

Since you have 6 nucs, you can donate a frame of young nurse bees to this hive.   Or donate a frame of the
cap broods without the older bees to this hive from the strongest nuc hive.   This way the issue is corrected.

[VermontHoneyBee]

So this is what I did. 
I placed the donated queen in the middle of the cluster in her cage.  Then I also took a frame or emerging brood from another hive.  Then I took one of the honey frames it had and gave it to the nuc where I took the brood.  I also asked the seller of the nuc to give me two frames of shaken nurse bees.  There where about two pounds of bees.  I added about 3/4 of the bees to the nuc.  All of this happened Thursday. 

Today I inspected the hive.  Not only did I find the queen but she is HUGE.  She is much bigger than when I purchased her.  She has laid eggs every where and they have drawn out most of the frames.  The hive that I took the brood from, I also added the rest of the shaken frame from above and that hive has recovered.  Giving them the extra honey actually made them explode and they drew almost all the frames all the way already.

So far, I am doing great.  I think I was very lucky here.