10 queens required

[jon]

I then remove the old queen with 2 frames of brood and 1 food into a nuc,
C B

That is a very important point. Unless you move the nucs to another site several miles away they will have absolutely no foraging bees as these return to the original location. Even if there is a flow on, they can starve. I had a couple of dozen frames full of sugar and ivy honey which I removed from colonies in April and I used these to feed nucs in May and June. Even at that, I still had to give them some extra syrup until they had enough foragers.