combining queenless hives with queen right nucs, need some help

[gdog]

My situation is I currently have three hives that have gone queenless (story of my life) no capped or open brood only some drone, OK numbers on workers and foragers, for now.

I have two nucs that have queens which are laying nicely. Need some good advise on how to combine them, was thinking of making two large hives from all of them. They have good reserves of honey which can be split between the two new hives. I don't plan on taking any honey from them this year.

I was going to place the nucs into a medium boxes, add some honey frames to the outsides, place a sheet of news paper between the nuc and other supers from the other three hives and let them combine on their own. Does this sound right?

If all works out I think they could do a very good job of filling enough frames/supers this fall for winter.   

[AllenF]

Newspaper combine is the way to go.   There are several good videos on youtube if you ever need a good refresher course.   First, are you 100% sure that you are queen less?

[gdog]

I'm 99 percent they are queenless the area where there was brood is empty and there is very spotty drones cells in the 10 frames. Cant find the queens in these hives. They are still bringing in pollen and nectar and do have capped honey.

[D Coates]

Before doing anything to combine them make sure they're queenless.  If you're in a dearth some queens will flat shut down laying.  Steal a frame of eggs from a nuc and put it in the possibly queenless hive.  Come back 3-4 days later to see if there are any Queen cells on that frame.  If there are, you're queenless and you can combine with certainty.  I'd do this on all 3 possibly queenless hives.  I'd bet you find at least one of them still has a queen in there.

[gdog]

I will be doing that after work tonight. I hope I have a queen or two in the hives that would make it easier. Would feeding them pollen patties help to get the queen up and laying again as well as adding some frames of eggs and brood. I have a hard time seeing the eggs, eyes are not as good as they once were. The comb is nice and dark though.