I want to combine a hive with laying workers with another one of my colonies that is queenright but in slow motion. Both have relatively small populations. I have heard you can just combine the two as one would do normally. I've gotten some advice to consider so far:
- I could do a newspaper combination but this should usually be done with large colonies.
- Spray all the bees and frames in each colony with water with a couple of drops of vanilla extract to confuse all of them, then put them together.
Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.
i'm kinda new at this, so i'm no expert. but i think if you combine the two you are asking for trouble, you may get your queen killed. there are others here with experience dealing with this who can tell you what to do with more certainty, but i think you might have to shake out the hive of laying workers and remove the hive so they have no home, then they will join your other hive and then you can add the frames later. but like i said my knowledge on the subject is limited and i'm just going by what i've read here on previous posts.
http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm)
http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm)
My first hive/nuc turned out to have a defective queen (defective wings) by the time we realized it I had laying workers. The guy I bought them from provided me with a new queen in a cage. The next day I called the bee inspector and she said "before the queen gets out I need to go out put the hive on a wagon take it at least 200 ft and shake out every bee next to a tree (so that they could climb up it to take off) and make sure that none of the bees remain in the hive and then take the hive and put it back in the original location." In your case I would put the Q right hive in the original spot, especially if they are near each other now.
I added a swarm hive to a weak hive after the queen died. I did move the swarm hive 60 miles from my farm to the hive in my yard. I dumped the bees in front of 3 weak hives hoping they would build up all three hives. After about 15 minutes they all went into the middle hive and it is still the strongest hive.
Good luck, Jim
Michael,
Invaluable information in those links! Thank you. I know what I will be doing now.
Going out the the bee yard right now to collect a frame of brood.
Best regards.