Well after a few more days of observation etc on all my hives I have come to the conclusion that the large population of bees in the nuc was in fact forager drift over several days. The other nucs although not as packed, are packed! In hind sight I was lucky I did this with the onset of the cold weather blast which could have crippled my little hives etc. if I had not given it the foragers.
Looking quickly at the parent hives that I moved over and stole foragers from, they are faring well with little set back. It seems the drones must have chilled on the outer frames due to this cold weather as I have a small number, maybe 20-30 drones at most, laying outside pulled after they chilled to death… I consider this a small lost to sustain a nuc which will continue to lose bees over the next month and a half roughly while the queen hatches, matures, mates, lays her eggs, and hatches her first brood 21 days later… (Basically 13 days to hatch + 7 days to mature and mate + 21 days for the brood to hatch)…
I highly recommend using the “swap” procedure when making nucs or when you have weak hives…
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