Combining Hives

[leechmann]

Yesterday, I combined two hives. I have one hive that started out as a swarm that I caputured which had no queen, or was killed in the heat of the battle.  I then gave it a frame of brood from another hive and they made 5 queen cells. About 5 days ago, I checked and the queen cells had hatched.

I have another hive in another location that had swarmed and it was left with no queen. This hive has been queenlss for approx. 3 weeks. So I put the queen right hive on the bottom and then used the newspaper and sugar water trick. Then I stacked the queenless hive on top. Today I went back and checked and they chewed through the newspaper and are just one happy family now, I hope.

While looking through the hive today, I found a small area with maybe a doz. capped brood from the hive I thought was queenless. I'm thinking it's a laying worker. My question is, will the queen from the queen right hive search out this laying worker out and whip her a$$? Or will they cooexist?

[Cossack]

I had this very same problem last year. I did exactly what you did and my results were not that good. They did not accept the queen and a few weeks later the colony became so weakened that Wax moths entered. The bees absconded and I was left with the other hives robbing out the combs.

I hope you have better luck than I did.

Mike.

[Kathyp]

area with maybe a doz. capped brood from the hive I thought was queenless

with laying workers, and you'll multiple per hive, you get drone brood.  if it's regular worker brood it's not from laying workers.  you could just have a failing queen.  in that case, hopefully she will be the one killed.

[leechmann]

Thanks Kathy, the area that had brood in it was very uneven kind of bulging out, unlike the smooth even surface with good brood. 

[iddee]

Try to find a queen or an evenly laid patch of eggs in a week. Either will signal success. Uneven patches of eggs, multiple eggs in a cell, eggs half way up the wall of cells, will signal failure.