hey everyone i have a very weak hive that i know will not make it through winter and another medium strength hive I would like to combine them but how exactly do i go about doing this?? thanks alex
drop the queen from the weak hive into a jar of alcohol...make very sure you have a queen in the strong hive first. put a sheet of newspaper over the top box of the stronger hive, put a few 1-2 inch slits in the news paper. place the weaker hive on top of the newspaper. i like to give a small upper entrance to the top hive. just a twig or something under the lid. wait a couple of days and they should be chewing through the paper and mixing. remove paper. done.
do both hives have honey in them? at this time of the year, honey in only one can cause some fighting problems when your first stack the hives. other than that, it's easy.
search 'newspaper combine' to get more info.
alright sounds good thanks, I have a hive with a medium and a deep on top of it but the deep on top has little to no food in it is it possible to take the deep off and just feed the medium all throughout winter and get them through?
I like to winter my hives with two full (75-90lbs) hive bodies. You have longer and severe winters than I do, so I would suggest feeding them thru the winter with pollen sub and 2/1 syrup.
alright so it is possible to get a lone med. full of bees through winter by means of feeding?
i don't think you'll want to do syrup or pollen. at this point, your best bet is to chose one of the dry sugar methods of feeding. you may be able to get more syrup into them for a short period of time with something like baggie feeders, but if it is cold or wet, skip the syrup.
I have fed liquids to my bees in the winter by placing an empty super body on top. You can use hive top feeders that are enclosed under your top cover, jar or baggie feeders. Bees need more than sugar to survive a long cold winter. I feed mine a mixture of soy flour, brewer's yeast, skimmed powder milk, pollen and granulated sugar. You can give this to them dry or mix these with a 2/1 sugar syrup to make patties. Good luck with your ladies.