Combining Bee Question?

blanc · April 15, 2012, 03:37:58 PM

The swarm I caught a month ago in Houma La. is doing fine and finally confirmed it has a beautiful queen. Was about 2lbs of bees. The first little swarm I caught does not have a queen and looking to combine the two. What do I expect to happen? A lot of fighting until they accept each other or any advice?

Bee-Bop · April 15, 2012, 04:00:13 PM

Do a paper combine, generally no problems.
Also you can at just a very small dab of vanilla extract to some sugar water, just want a very iight vanilla odder
spray bee between frames of both boxes, then do a paper combine.

Bee-Bop

AllenF · April 15, 2012, 04:01:19 PM

Are you sure there is no queen. How long has it been since you caught it? A newspaper combine is the way to combine hives.

blanc · April 15, 2012, 05:47:40 PM

Thx Bee Bop and Allen. The one that has no queen is about a month and a half ago catch and was very small after swarm probably. Drew a little comb but not much progress.

iddee · April 15, 2012, 09:28:34 PM

I would just shake them out 6 foot in front of the other hive and put the box away. They will take up with the other hive without fighting.

FRAMEshift · April 15, 2012, 11:58:51 PM

It's such a small combine, you don't have to do anything except move the frames into the new box. If you want to spray some vanilla, that's fine but we move bees around all the time and they don't fight unless they are a larger organized hive.

If you do have a larger combine to do, it helps to confuse the bees as much as possible. Vanilla, smoke, and brushing bees off their frames into the hive will add to confusion and break up any organized defensive behavior. I've never seen a need for a newspaper combine if the bees have been queenless for a while. If you are stacking one large hive on top of another, maybe then you could use newspaper.

blanc · April 17, 2012, 07:52:14 PM

Well today I found a queen in the small swarm I thought did not have one. It was in a top bar hive I made and wound up cutting brood comb out due to cross combing and put it in a medium nuc to let em have at it. There were quite a number of new bees coming out of cells so no need to combine. Should be a nice hive by the end of summer.