Virgin queen into existing mini nuc

[Jonathan]

Having kept bees for many years this is the first time I have attempted to raise queens using mini nucs. I have a couple of mated queens which I will be putting into their permanent homes shortly which will leave the mini nucs queenless. I have some more queens about to hatch and my question is is it possible to run a virgin queen into these existing mini nucs or should I start from scratch?

 

[Tim1606]

I usually place cells in the mini nucs when I remove a mated queen, but I have run virgin queens in with no problems in the past.
When I ran out of mini nucs earlier in the year I made up 2 frame nucs and ran virgins in them. I lost one out of 15.

 

[Teemore]

I introduced two newly emerged queens from a batch of grafts into Kielers (mini nucs/mating nucs) last night (Other 10 queens from that batch were transferred as cells on Saturday). Both Kielers had mated queens taken from them a few days ago.
I realized that I had forgotten to bring fondant with me to put into queen release cages so I just opened the ends of the cell protectors and let the queens wander down amongst the bees in the mating nucs. No drama and the resident bees took absolutely no notice of the new queens. There is no guarantee that this will work every time though......
I gather that commercial queen producers will aim to get approx. 3 queens mated in each mating nuc during the course of the beekeeping season.

 

[Jonathan]

Thank you both for your responses. I thought it possible but having never done this before I didn't want to risk all of my hard work and believe me I have had far more failures than successes with this queen rearing malarky.