combining swarm with queenless hive

splitrock · July 05, 2011, 07:24:41 PM

I discovered I had a hive that was queen-less the other day. No brood, eggs or anything. A fair amount off bees though. I had planned on combining them with one of my other colonies today, but ended up doing a swarm capture. They are hived in a drawn hive body now.

Would it be OK to combine these two right away or should I wait? And, would it matter which box went on top of the other? Any words of wisdom will be greatly appreciated.

Joel

skatesailor · July 05, 2011, 09:16:03 PM

My choice would be to give the swarm a few days to set up housekeeping. Then if you want to combine I like to put the strongest hive on the bottom. I also use the screen method as opposed to the newspaper. Make sure the upper has an entrance.
Depending on your definition of "a fair amount of bees" why don't you give them a frame of new eggs and let them start their own hive.

Sparky · July 05, 2011, 09:35:04 PM

Do you know that the swarm is not from the hive that had no brood ? When they are getting prepared to swarm the queen will shut down so she can slim up to fly.

splitrock · July 05, 2011, 10:54:36 PM

Sparky...Yes, I am sure the swarm is not from one of my hives.

Skaitsailor, I think I will do as you suggest and forget the combine, and just add a frame or two from one of my strong hives.

Thanks for the advice.

Joel

Larry Bees · July 05, 2011, 11:11:24 PM

Quote from: skatesailor on July 05, 2011, 09:16:03 PM
My choice would be to give the swarm a few days to set up housekeeping. Then if you want to combine I like to put the strongest hive on the bottom. I also use the screen method as opposed to the newspaper. Make sure the upper has an entrance.
Depending on your definition of "a fair amount of bees" why don't you give them a frame of new eggs and let them start their own hive.

What is the screen method? Larry

skatesailor · July 06, 2011, 10:56:24 AM

The way I do the screen method is to put the two hives I am going to combine one on top of the other still in their original hives. That means bottom boards and covers still in place. After a couple of days this way, I remove the bottom hives top cover and the top hives bottom board and put a window screen between them. I have a 3 sided spacer to maintain a top entrance. After a week of this I remove the screen and spacer and put in a piece of slitted paper. I have never had a problem with this. This is done by the way after one of the hives is determined to be queenless for one reason or another.
I had a problem with only using paper so that is why I use both.
BTW I am doing one house cutout this week and next week I have 3 hives in one house to do.

Larry Bees · July 06, 2011, 10:23:07 PM

Thanks for explaining that. Larry