Uncertain about new Nuc

[Dougman]

Acquired a New 5 frame Nuc about three days ago and quickly installed it without inspection because it was late in the evening. Inspected it today and found only a small amount of capped brood on three frames and a small amount of honey on a couple frames. No sign of uncapped brood or larvae of any kind. One frame had two open and one closed queen cells near the center of the frame. The bees were busy drawing out frame but no sign of queen or anything recently laid. Your thoughts and suggestions please.

[iddee]

Return to seller immediately.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. Doug, sounds like emergency queen cells, that is determined by queen cells in the middle of the frame.  Could be a supersedure as well.  Either way, appears to me, the queen is absent and the bees are making a new queen.  I wonder about the fella that sold you the nuc???????

Apparently you know what to look for, so I would say your bees will be OK.  Look for eggs about the 21 of July, 3 weeks.  Now the 21 is not written in stone, this is an approximation as well could be 4 weeks.

I would look at the capped queen cell in about 8 more days, July 10th,the bottom of the cell should be open, the remaining queen cell should be open from the side.  Now I don?t know how long the queen cell has been capped so the dates I give you are guesses????

Best of luck to you Mr. Doug, keep us informed, the folks here just want to help and there are some real masters of beekeeping on this board, from the USA  all the way to Australia we have some impressive beeks, much better than yours truly.
Blessings

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. Doug, I told you we{Beemaster} have some real masters of beekeeping, Iddee is one of those, one of several...,,,,

[beepro]

So this nuc hive is missing a queen and trying to make the QCs to reestablish the colony again.  Apparently, the
seller is not monitoring his nuc when you got them.  Go ahead to send some bee pics to the seller or call him up to
inform him about the nuc situation. 

If there are many bees in there still, they can make another mated queen.  You do have to wait up to almost a month for this
process to take place from beginning to the end.   If you don't have that many bees maybe you can get a frame of bees from another
hive or from CL.   If you want to speed up the process and not want to wait almost a month then buy them a mated queen now.  The mated queen after her
release will start laying.   You do have to cut out these cap cells so that the virgin will not kill the mated queen.   There are many options to remedy this
situation starting with the seller first to see what to do next.    Don't argue with him just present the facts/situation.   Other options will come afterward.

[Dougman]

Thank you all. I have already contacted seller but haven't heard back. I have a source for mated queens near me so that's good. Thanks again everyone.

[Dougman]

Seller called back and told me to meet him tomorrow and we would pick out a new Nuc and I could also keep the current one in hopes it would make a new queen. I'M  IMPRESSED.