Hi Will,
Do you mean limited activity at the entrance to the nuc?- if so this is normal as the original foragers will have returned to the site of the original colony. Some of the younger bees then become foragers but this can take a while. If they had limited stores you may also need to feed them.
a timeline would be better
Without a timeline a conclusion would be unreliable, especially if the queen hides or your virgin recognition is not up to speed.
26th April nuc was made.
What method can you deploy if you find laying workers...
Good idea Ill have a go at the weekend!
You can unite them to a very strong colony or shake them out a few metres in front of your other hives.
they can only lay drone eggs, so you'll know once they're capped - they also tend to lay in a haphazard 'pepperpot' pattern unlike a Drone Laying queen which will in general lay a tidy (ish) slab of brood
You often see multiple eggs in the cells. Really multiple, like 10. Also what Ive seen is single eggs everywhere through the brood and in the supers.
. After you take frames out and and inspect them, you can just sit them on their ends on the ground and lean them up again the hives/stand (that will avoid crushing bees and honeycomb). You could also put some frames back in as you work through. I'd say it's queenright however, given the little bit of brood and what I saw overall, but because you lost at least one swarm from them a couple of months ago, the total number of bees wasn't very high and time is taken for the new queen to get mated, start laying and then for her offspring to emerge etc. so there are not enough bees to collect enough to use the super at this stage. I wouldn't take frames away from them (in the main box) but you could certainly get a container and scrape a little capped honey off and into it to bring inside to taste.
