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  • Combining hives, what to do with supers?

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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #10960  by Bananas
 21 May 2021, 13:32
I need to combine 2 hives as one is weakened and another is doing well. The one doing well has 2 supers on the top.

Im familiar with the newspaper method of combining but just wondered what goes where! Im inclined to put the newspaper on top of the supers then the weaker brood box on top of that. Does that make sense?!!
 #10961  by Cable_Fairy
 21 May 2021, 14:44
Had the same sort of thing last year, I put the two brood box's together with newspaper between them and put the supers on top and it worked alright. It only takes a few days for them to eat the newspaper.
 #10962  by Steve 1972
 21 May 2021, 14:55
Before you do anything you need to know why one is weak..disease for instance and you need to make sure you find and remove the Queen in the weak colony if you do unite..brood box over the supers is fine just remove the brood box in a day or two..
 #10969  by Bananas
 22 May 2021, 07:19
The weak hive is as such as it was a swarm caught a month ago. Numbers are finishing fast and there is no queen or eggs etc.

Ok I’ll stick the brood box on top of the supers. Reason for asking this was that the supers belong to the stringer hive and didn’t want to confuse by having the stronger hive supers then the weaker hive brood box then newspaper then the stronger hive!
 #10982  by Caroline
 22 May 2021, 18:15
Bananas wrote:
22 May 2021, 07:19
The weak hive is as such as it was a swarm caught a month ago. Numbers are finishing fast and there is no queen or eggs etc.
Are you saying there was no queen when you 'caught the swarm' ? Sounds to me like it could be what was left of a colony that was dying out due to lack of queen or disease / heavy varroa load, and the bees absconded.

Before uniting a swarm with an existing colony I would quarantine the swarm until I had seen at least one full brood cycle to check 'all in order'.
 #10983  by Steve 1972
 22 May 2021, 21:47
This is where we come unstuck..no eggs means no Queen apparently..the Queen could and must be still in there otherwise the workers would be laying drone brood..and something else has me wondering..why would swarm setup home without a laying Queen.
 #10985  by NigelP
 23 May 2021, 09:32
Could be it was a swarm with a virgin queen. Sounds like she is still unmated. Not surprising given the atrocious weather. I'd want to be really sure what is happening before uniting. At least a test frame of eggs.
 #10991  by MickBBKA
 24 May 2021, 03:37
Agree with Nigel, quite likely an unmated queen. Another point is if you split the brood boxes by 2 supers the queen pheromone wont be strong enough to cover all 4 so the bees in the q- colony will think they are q- anyway and possibly go on to be drone layers. Test frame is required to start off at least. An unmated queen can be very small and you may never see her. I have had a queen take 6 weeks to start laying due to weather, you need to consider bees temperament, sound, movement on the comb, stores placement, polished cells...etc. This year is a nightmare even for the most experienced folk. Last year was bad, I had 13 queenless colonies in June. Torrential rain and gales just blew them away, this year is worse.
 #10998  by JoJo36
 25 May 2021, 05:34
Rather than newspaper how does the air freshener work?!
I've only ever used newspaper but thought air freshener may be even easier as I assume its only sprayed in brood area?!
 #10999  by NigelP
 25 May 2021, 08:14
Spray both half's and stick together.
I use this most of the time for unites with no problems to date.
Another way is to heavily smoke both half's and then unite.