When using a donor frame to re-queen a hive do you leave the nurse bees on the frame or shake them off and let the bees in the queen-less hive cover the new frame to keep it warm?
I shake the bees, putting in only the frame of brood. The reason for this is that the hives have different odors associated with its queen. Putting in the frames with the bees still on them is likely to cause a riot of bees killing bees until the odors (phenomones) have blended together enough or all the new bees are dead.
The problem is not as pronounced with bees that are just hatched (fuzzy) and frames of brood and bees from different hives can be combined in building a nuc if the foundaion frame or honey frame (if shaken) sperarates the frames of live bees.
OK I feel better now, I did shake the bees off before putting it in the queen-less hive but wasn't sure if I had done the right thing or spoiled a frame of brood. Also thanks for the info on making up a nuke with frames from different hives, I would have put the brood frames side by side and added the honey and pollen frames to the outside. Back in the late 70's early 80's when I had bees I always bought queens but I had a super gentle hive and when the nuke went queen-less I thought it might be the right time to try a simple method of making a new queen from them. Hopefully it will work and the virgin queen will find drones that are just as gentle as the mother hive.