My friend Shawna went and got a swarm today when i was at work. It turned out that I will keep this swarm, but I want to combine it with another hive that is not thriving.
I will go through the other hive tomorrow morning and look for the queen. If it turns out that I do not find her, would it still be ok to do this combine with newspaper???
The hive that is not thriving may not have a queen at all. I have found a queen cell that they are attending to. Perhaps they were trying to replace the other queen.
In any case, what will be the scenario if there are queens in both hives and I do the combine. Will the fighting be really bad???
Thanks for any help
Annette
Really go through that suspected queenless hive Annette and try your best to determine if they are queenless.
A few different scenarios can happen if you combine them. One being the weak queenless hive so desperately wants a queen that they accept the queenright hive. There could be some casualties dished out upon the weaker, queenless hive but smoke both hives and this usually will cut way down on deaths even eliminate them entirely.
If the weaker hive has a queen, she may be killed along with a good many of the weaker bees.
Another scenario I have seen with a combine with two queens is that one leaves with its weaker colony in a swarm.
...JP
I'm going to do my best to find the queen before I combine. Thanks JP for the help
Reluctance rises in commenting but I will, I did a combine recently, the outcome was odd to me.
I placed a weak hive with a queen in a deep and a medium with one capped queen cell from this colony in the medium. One sheet of newspaper with slits with-out a whole in the corner(s) was placed a top the medium. A swarm on drawn comb thought to be queenless on top of the newspaper in a deep. On top of this, a pollen sub with hbh on top of the frames, an inner-cover with syrup in feeders inside another box with top cover.
After moving the hives to the same location at night, I smoked the queensless hive when looking for a queen or signs of just before the combine.
7 days later, Day light hours, one corner was chewed out of newspaper, eggs to capped brood were in both deep boxes. nothing was in the medium. Two queens were found. one above and one below the newspaper. There was only one entrance. I removed the medium and separated the deeps with a queen in each.
JP!
I always enjoy watching your cutout and swarm albums...! Keep it up.
-Rodni
Well that was interesting WD. You said they had only one entrance, so both colonies were using the same entrance by way of that small hole in the newspaper?? I wonder why they never combined??
Anyway I could not, for the life of me, find that queen in that weak hive. I went through all frames twice and really inspected the frames for a long time looking and looking. I did find single eggs, so I know that they have a queen, but cant find her.
So what I did in the mean time is, I set up the swarm into an empty 5 frame nuc, 2 medium nucs total and feeding them. It is the mini nuc that Brush Mt sells, has its own feeder and bottom board.
I will keep these 2 hives separate for now until I can go back in and find that queen in the weak hive.
Thanks for the responses
Annette
Yes, one entrance/exit, the whole they chewed out them selves, about the size of a half dollar piece
It was suggested by another member here one queen may have been virgin. will know more on next check.
Good luck to you...
Annette,
I was faced with a very similar situation today and here is what I did.
I had a weak colony, from a small swarm I hived about 4 weeks ago in an 8 frame medium (that's all I use). Only about 3 frames of bees. They had to raise a queen and I saw eggs and larva for the first time Saturday.
This morning I caught a huge swarm on the other side of town. Filled my 5 frame nuc almost to overflowing. Since I am hoping I caught the swarm queen but don't know for sure I did this: I put newspaper between the small weak hive, then a queen excluder, then a new box and 8 frames. A couple frames had some newly drawn foundation that did not appear to have had brood in it before. THEN I put another queen excluder on the top of the 2nd box (get the picture, if there is a queen in the second box she is boxed in top and bottom. I am only planning on leaving the top queen excluder on a day or two to try and keep the new swarm from absconding. I left the cover ajar at the back of the hives to give the new girls in the top an entrance. I put a pale feeder over the top hole in the inner cover (which I am using right now as the cover). By nightfall the swarm bees seemed to be coming and going quite normally.
I figured in about 10 days I would check to see if there are any eggs/brood up top. If it turns out I do have a queen up and down, I may try to run a double brood nest. I know the bottom queen is brand new. I am assuming the swarm queen would be older, certainly the older of the two. I may see which one is laying the best and try to find and pinch the other. But I'd kind of like to keep the older swarm queen as she will have different genetics than the new queen, which is 3rd or 4th generation from a package I started with last year and my other two hives both have queens descended from that same package.
Anyone see anything wrong with temporarily doing the double queen excluder set up. (I know, there are a couple of drones temporarily shut up on the cover, but they can go to one of my other hives if they want.)
Linda D
I could do this with just the one queen excluder on top of the newspaper. I can give them a top entrance and the bottom hive gets the bottom entrance.
I have never done this before and don't know anything about running a 2 queen hive. So the workers would eat through the newspaper and accept each other even though there are different pheromones coming from both queens?? How does this differ from just combining without the excluder. Because the queens can't fight, the workers will not fight??? Then what happens next?? The workers go everywhere in the hive, top and bottom, but the drones stay with their own hives and the queens stay with their own hives??? Where does the honey go??
Need more information please!!
Thanks
Annette
this might be a good time for the window screen? there's no real advantage that i can see to running a 2 queen set up. it's just one hive on top of another. why don't you pinch the queen that is least productive then do the combine?
Tell me about the window screen again please
to combine hives you can use a window screen between hives for a couple of days and then remove it. disadvantage of it is that you have to remove it. advantages are that you can combine smells without the fighting, and if you are not really sure you need to combine hives, you have lost nothing.
it's probably most useful when you think a hive might be queenless but you are not sure. you can keep them from developing laying workers while you decide what, if anything, you are going to do. if you find the hive is not without it's queen you can just pull it back off.
DON'T FORGET the upper entrance. :-D
Thanks Kathy for the info. I am just going back tomorrow and try to find that queen and pinch her.
I was using the queen excluder to give me time to find out if I have two queens or one. If I find eggs in the upper chamber, I will know I have two (already knew there was one in the bottom). If I have two, I will have to decide which one to pinch.
I am just not good at finding the queen so I was taking the lazy way out and letting the queen excluder help me for a week -- gave the upper swarm drawn comb so it shouldn't take long for eggs to show up if there is a queen there. I know, I know, could be a virgin queen and take longer -- but was such a huge swarm I am thinking it should have been an older queen who left on the first bail out.)
Thanks Kathy. I forgot about needing the screen to really run two hives, not just the queen excluder.
The advantage to running the two queen set up as I saw it was just to get the populations built up faster, but at this stage of the year that may not be such a big deal. The flow is on and this hive will not be producing honey this season anyway. Probably end up with a huge population just in time for the dearth and have to feed to keep'em alive :shock:
I did take the top queen excluder off after 24 hrs. I could tell the girls had settled in and weren't going to abscond.
Just an update!! I found that queen today and pinched her. Will do a combine Tuesday morning with the stronger swarm.
I was looking back on an older post I made here last year. It seems I did combine 2 swarms and never pinched one queen. I posted that it was total chaos.
Glad I got one queen pinched today. Don't want to deal with that sort of chaos.
Annette
I just did a combine with two hives i put a 5 frame nuc in a weak hive and pinched the bad queen I didnt cage her what i did was i sprayed both hives with honey bee healthy sugar syrup i lost zero bees doing it this way in the past i had the bees fighting and lost quite a few. This time with the honey bee healthy it masked the scent of the different bees and the combination went well Chris
I like using the window screen method when I combine and strongly recommend it. I leave it for about a week and then replace it with the slit newspaper. Haven't had a problem yet. Make sure both hives have entrances.