There's something here we don't know ?
8th July your post:
"I have a nuc now with no frames. Its a swarmed queen with handful of bees. She's starting to lay now thou and has some brood. Will this nuc build up in time for winter ? "
Also on 8th July you post:
"One of my hives swarmed about the 18th june and the other was about to swarm on the 21st June but did swarm on the 22nd after we done an AS with the hive(we missed some Queen cells). I managed to find her and put her into a nuc box because she was clipped.
I was left with 4 hives(if I can even call them hives now after splitting) with virgin queens and 1 queen in the nuc box. The virgin queens hatched sometime between the 23-25th June seeing as the closed queen cells where ready to hatch.
On the 29th June I opened up the hives and found more queen cells ready to hatch in the 4 hives but called another beekeeper to come and take away. When checking the hives we couldn't find the virgin queens, we closes the boxes and I haven't been near them since that date.
I was out yesterday having a look at the entrance to see how their getting on. There's lots if activity in 3 of the hives and one is very quiet. Also lookes inside the nuc box and noticed that the queen is laying and there's some larvae and capped brood, not that much thou.
Seeing as my virgin queens hatched around the 23-25th June, am I OK to inspect the hive to see how its getting on.
I also bought another full hive on Sunday but I'm abit worries about it after opening it up last night to find no queen or no eggs. This hive was 2 brood boxes with dummy board in bottom brood. In this box, it had brood, honey\pollen and larva. There was one frame still needing drawn out in this box but in the other frames, they where very light. Lots of empty space for laying or even to store honey etc... In 2nd brood box, there was 1 and half full drawn frame of honey but not capped. Also one super box full with frames of old drawn out wax but bees haven't touched this yet. I'm near sure there was an AS done with this hive if I remember correctly. What I notice about this hive is it doesn't have the bees in it I was expecting. Not one frame was completely full with bees. When I bought it, the beekeeper said he hadn't checked it in a week so I'm wondering had it swarmed because there's defo no eggs. "
So ... How many hives/colonies have you got at present ? What is their history (in simple terms please) ?
Have you got ANY hives that have a laying queen with eggs and BIAS ?
Do you know what a test frame is now ?
You certainly need to do something (and soon) to get at least one of your hives (and preferably two) into the sort of condition where they can finish the season and build up ready for winter. I think Finman told you some weeks ago that trying to overwinter 2 frame colonies is, for a beginner, very difficult but you seem to be heading in this direction ?
Do you have a plan of any sort that you can share with us ?
I'm not being critical - I feel almost sorry for you at this stage and it's clear you don't have much in the way of a mentor over there ... give us all the information you can and someone on here will be able to suggest a plan to get you into a state where you have some chance of success and one that several people may agree on.
Although ... there's a few that might agree with JBM about a safer hobby like hang gliding !
)Found the swarm(small) and put into a nuc box. Now I had 4 hive boxes with brood, eggs and honey with 1 open and closed (ready to open)QCs on the 22nd june. Cells opened around the 23-27th june but just last week, only 1 hive box had a laying queen(larvae and eggs). The other virgin queens either are missing or haven't mated. The nuc box queen is laying but there ain't lots of bees or places to lay.
