Saturday I pulled a beautiful frame of eggs and a frame of sealed brood from a strong hive. The egg frame had everything from brand new tiny dot eggs to large larvae about to be sealed. These went into a little four frame nuc with a frame of honey and an empty frame.
Today, day four there are 6 queen cells being built, and the small colony is pulling from the honey frame. This nuc is only 50 feet from the original hive, but apparently didn't lose a great number of bees to migrating back to the home hive. There is a steady stream of foragers coming and going.
Interesting enough, the eggs selected for queen cells were not the youngest eggs. The chosen eggs were about 2-3X the size of the youngest eggs.
queen cells are made from hatched eggs which are 3 to 4 days old
if you have wax foundation you can cut out some of those cells and do more splits with them if you wish