Combining hives

[Bob Wilson]

What happens if I combine three queenless hives?
I am removing the queens from a hive and two nucs, and combining them to make a large production hive. I do paper combines, and shift brood frames as needed, but I thought I read here once, that if bees from three or more hives are combined, that they don't tend to fight

[Ben Framed]

Bob Im not sure this is what you are looking for but I will place it for you consideration. Michael Bush posted this about 5 years ago..


https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=51385.msg454288#msg454288

[BeeMaster2]

Bob,
Make them queen less for a few hours before putting them together. I have never read that three or more makes it easy to combine. I would put her in a cage, not a queen catcher so that you can test to see if they have accepted her before adding her to the new combined hive. Making it queen less will help acceptance. Make sure there are no queen cells in any of the frames.
Jim Altmiller

[Michael Bush]

Anything over two helps a lot in keeping fighting down.  Of course queenless also helps.  Weak also helps.  The more confusion the better as far as fighting.  Smoking heavily helps a lot.

[Acebird]

How do you do newspaper combines in a long hive?

[William Bagwell]

Anything over two helps a lot in keeping fighting down. 

Seems logical. Know it is true with some other animals such as llamas. Almost impossible to keep two intact males together but three or more will form a stable 'bachelor herd' with minimal fighting.

[Michael Bush]

I've done a newspaper combine in a long hive by putting newspaper onto a frame and leaving it big enough to touch the sides.  Staple it to the frame.  It will slow them down.

[Bob Wilson]

I find that a sheet of wet newspaper forms a nice, tight barrier, folded over a frame and draped down into the hive.
Last time I used an opened, wet, brown paper bag. They completely shredded it in two days.