New backyarder in Palm Bay, FL

[Dangermouse01]

Hello all;
Have been a lurker here for about a year.
Started a backyard hive (8 frame deep) earlier this year with packaged bees. Was getting drawn frames, some capped honey (sugar water feed), bees bringing in pollen, but had pretty scattered brood pattern. Robbing started and before I could get a handle on it, my hive being pretty weak succumb.
About a month later near the start of July, I purchased a local Nuc hive and installed that (robbing screen already in place on my hive this time) along with 3 of the partially drawing out frames from my previous attempt (kept in the freezer). I located the queen from the Nuc as I was putting the frames in.
I have since put a medium box on the top, but they don't seem to want to move up into in. They will hang out on the frames and foundation (wax) in the medium but don't seem to have any interest in drawing any out. I stopped the feed, since it looked like they were just putting the feed in comb in the bottom box, and there is plenty of pollen coming into the hive.
This morning when I was out there, I heard pipping, got the smoker lit, put the veil on and took a look in the box. Located the pipping queen by the pipping, found two other queen cells on frames (in the middle). But could never locate another queen, but there were plenty of bees, so I could have over looked her (the one with the Nuc wasn't marked).
Of the 8 frames in the deep, 4 or 5 were almost solid capped honey, the others a mix of capped and un-capped honey and pollen, and only 1 or 2 had capped brood (couldn't see any signs of eggs or larva).

So I am guessing something might have happened to the original queen and now I have a virgin queen in there.
Any suggestions on what I should do?
Will the virgin queen go out and get mated and return?
Replace the top medium box (that they haven't used) with a deep and move some of the honey frames up to it?

Looking forward to this journey (even though it has had a bumpy start).

DM

[cao]

Welcome to the forum. 

>Will the virgin queen go out and get mated and return?
yes.

>Any suggestions on what I should do?
Either leave them alone and let them sort it out or if you have a nuc box handy you could put the frame with the queen cells on it in the nuc.  That would double the chances of getting a queen returning from her mating flight.

>Replace the top medium box (that they haven't used) with a deep and move some of the honey frames up to it?
That would help.  Sometimes the bees just don't want to expand into another box.  I have sveral hives that seem to like using only one box.

[GSF]

Welcome

[BeeMaster2]

Welcome to Beemaster.
Jim

[Rurification]

Welcome to the forum.   

[NewBeeMan]

Welcome aboard.

www.newbeeman.net

[KeyLargoBees]

Welcome aboard and good luck with the ladies