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That's a bit of a faff!

I bought one like this from ebay. I fixed it into a beer fermenting bin - being careful with the hole cutting. It works well.

With a small q/r colony, I would have it upstairs, above an excluder so the queen is out of the way, to an extent, until all the bees are combined. Newspaper unites are very reliable but not 100%. Hungry colonies are, I believe, more likely to kill the queen in these circumstances.

The general rule is for a nuc to be put into a brood box and it is fed/allowed to grow until it pretty much fills the brood box before putting a super on, so it's odd advice you were given. I have also seen some poor advice on FB - but I haven't been on FB for years.

That works better than just a J. The 14 x 12's only come with a wider top bar - making it a JN5. I have used the thinner top bars (making a JN4) and they perform the same. The weakest part is always where the side bars fit in, where the wiid is quite weak.

Yes, correct. Brain malfunction on my part.

It would make sense to refer to the 14 x 12 frames as, say, J5's (they have a wider top bar as the DN5's) so everyone knew what we were talking about. (Would just take a few frame suppliers to have a quick whatsapp discussion to agree on it).... I would be inclined to do a demaree next spring...

I do roughly as Polyhive - but not at this time of year.

you wont get laying workers if there is a queen present.

I doubt it young man - the original question was in February.

As Dani says; If you leave a queencell, there's a chance that a virgin that's already out will swarm. If you open up all the queencells and release the queens, the colony won't swarm and the sisters will sort themselves out. One will survive. It works. (Ted Hoopers Guide to Bees and Honey)

If the wet frames are close by (within 50 - 100 metres) it will set off robbing. The reason is that bees will come back and dance to tell their sisters there's food out there. However the waggle dance only works with distances of around 100 metres plus and the round dance, used for short...

Many beekeepers have had arguments for the same reason . Agressively agreeing with each other :)

I have heard of the odd report of a queen staying in a cage for ages - say after being lost in the post - and surviving OK, but it's not ideal. Room temperature in the dark would be the best place to keep her.

September is too late for winter bees to be varroa free.

Slow cooker as the heater works fine. Separate thermostat required.

There are often decent days in September for mating.

Lots of options with beekeeping! 'Hope it works and with luck the bad tempered bees will behave better with a decent queen.

A colony of that size would be better off in a nuc or polynuc rather than a full-sized hive so they have less space to heat. They will expand quicker. You won't need a super this year by the sounds of it. Winter is approaching and the colony will need stores, so I would have no problem in gentle...

You have a point that hefting is a little subjective and sometimes it can be difficult to judge whether a hive is fairly full or fairly empty. Very full and very (Panic) empty are easier to measure and some spring (luggage) scales are cheap enough.