Options for using nucs for new queens

[Rurification]

I now have a nuc with a queen.  [yay!  It was a smaller afterswarm - I thought they went queenless, but I found her yesterday and she's fat and beautiful.]  Since I have 5 other colonies, and it's almost August, I'm leaving them in the nuc this year.

I have so many hypothetical questions -

Let's say one of my other colonies goes queenless.   How do I use the resources in the nuc to best advantage?   

Does it depend on the time of year?

Let's say one goes queenless before winter this fall.   How do you combine a nuc with a regular lang box?

[Michael Bush]

>Let's say one of my other colonies goes queenless.   How do I use the resources in the nuc to best advantage?   

Do a combine.

>Does it depend on the time of year?

Everything depends on the time of year...

>Let's say one goes queenless before winter this fall.   How do you combine a nuc with a regular lang box?

The simplest is a lot of smoke.  Next would be to make a frame with newspaper to do a horizontal newspaper combine...

[BeeMaster2]

Robin,
Like Michael, I would smoke the queen less hive, make space for the 4/5 frames from the nuc and place them in the hive. The bees in the nuc can protect the queen until the other Bees are adjusted. I have this done this successfully with just 2 frames. I have also slowly placed queens directly on a frame of bees and had them accept her if they were queen less.
Jim

[Rurification]

Thank you, guys.   I appreciate the strategies.  Let's hope I don't have to use them this year.

[Oldbeavo]

We give the hive and the new bees a dusting of icing sugar when adding the new nuc. Every one smells the same and we are all having a good time licking off the icing sugar.
Also sprinkle a little at the entrance for the field bees to smell.
Michael is write in that hives that have been queenless for a time and failed to rear a queen will readily accept a new queen, sense of survival I guess