Advice needed,Please

[teignbee]

I really need some help. I have just started with beekeeping and have had some conflicting advice. I picked up a nuc a week last sunday. This nuc was very kindly given to me by a highly respected beekeeper. The nuc had been made from a split. It contained five frames of young bees and last years queen.
This sunday (yesterday) the lady that supplied the bees came to my apiary
and transferred them into a national brood box containing a full set of frames, as the nuc was teaming with bees.
Also on monday last week i collected my first swarm,and installed them into my other hive, with a full set of frames.Again,the hive was inspected,the queen was found and marked,she is a laying queen, so all seemed well to me.
I have also got a nuc on order from another beekeeper,which i have been told is now ready. I had expected this nuc well before now,but because of the delay in getting it,that is the reason i went ahead and obtained the other bees.
When i told the chap that i had already obtained some bees,incidently,they have already been paid for, he said that i should not have hived the split nuc as it was too soon to do this.The lady beekeeper said to me that we could combine the new nuc when i obtained it with the already hived bees. Again, the other beekeeper said this was not a good idea.I dont have,and to be honest,cant afford to buy another hive at the moment
I hope all this makes sense. I really dont know which way to go from here. I do realise that people have there own ways of doing things and respect both opinions but am now really confused as to what i should do next.

 

[chris_richmond]

I dont see why you cant combine them using the newspaper method, but obviously you will need to kill one of the queens when doing so. I cant say what the good and bad points of doing this are as I am fairly new to beekeeping myself, but I have just succesfully joined two good size colonies this way due to one queen failing to lay all of a sudden shame as she was last years queen who was a very prolific queen until she stopped a couple of weeks ago.

 

[JCBrum]

Get some plywood and make a box according to Hedgerow Pete's instructional video. Instead of making it nuc width, make it 460mm wide x 460mm long. i.e. a double width nuc box. Your bees will be fine in it for a few weeks at least and it should cost less than £10. Cheaper than that if you can find some off-cuts.

JC.

 

[teignbee]

Ok,thanks for the advice. So i think i would like to try and combine the nuc with one of my hives. What would be the best method to use? I will be picking up the nuc on saturday.

 

[teignbee]

Also, should i still be feeding the two hives.

 

[VEG]

Feed them to help draw out foundation then stop as there is plenty of nectar and pollen about for them at the moment.

 

[Nellie]

I know I'm a noob so feel free to ignore me, but if they have any drawn frames I'd say don't feed. In the Bristol area there's a full on flow at the moment, they're bringing stuff in quicker than they can use it where I am. My hive appears to be trying to swarm despite 3 spare frames of foundation in the brood box and a super of foundation because they're storing nectar in the brood area.