Merging Queenless Hive

[Butterchurn]

I have a queenless hive that I need to merge with my two other very strong hives. The queenless hive is italian and the strong ones (queen right) are carniolans. The italians are in two deeps and the carniolans are in mediums. Ihe italians have emrging adults many empty cells but no eggs and no larvae (no laying workers, yet).

Can I shake the bees off of the frames then distribute the two deeps of honey/open cells to the other hives by putting the deep boxes, one on top of each carni hive? Will the bees from the italian hive having been shaken off the frames go into the two new hives without messing with the queens or causing some other rucus?

I thought about requeening, but I don't want to at this point.

Advice on how to proceed is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Ron

[Phoenix]

Can I shake the bees off of the frames then distribute the two deeps of honey/open cells to the other hives by putting the deep boxes, one on top of each carni hive?

Sure you can... but why would you go through the hassle of shaking the hives out only to put those frames and boxes on the other hives, and hope the bees will be taken in by the others without a rucus?

If you don't want to salvage the colony and would rather use them to strengthen the other two, throw one of each deep on top of the Carni colonies by using the newspaper combine method.  No need to shake the bees out, get them all worked up and risk getting stung.

[tig]

what i'd do is merge your queenless hive with the other 2 strong colonies.  divide the frames of the queenless hive, and place a newspaper sheet on top of the hive with a queen, place a super with the queenless frames of bees on top and wait about 3 days. by then the bees of the queenless hive would have eaten the newspaper and merged with the queenright colony.  It would be better to divide the queenless hive so there wont be that many bees entering the queenright colony.  you could make 2 small holes in the newspaper, using a small nail just so the bees on top can smell the bees underneath and vice versa.  this will encourage them to eat the newspaper and the smell of the hives will mix. a word of caution, do not make too big a hole because you dont want the bees to mix too soon as that may cause fighting!