Another uniting/combining question.

[Beagle23]

~Hope you lads and lasses can offer some advice.

The situation is this.

I have a National hive which is queenless and I have a NUC from a split which has a laying queen with capped brood. I want to combine them but....

The frames in the NUC are deep and the frames in the brood box are deep as well of course, but I only have the one brood box so I can't go for the one brood box on top of the other approach.

So my question is, how can I introduce the queen and the brood without a massacre? Will the fact that all of the current bees are sisters make any difference (every hatched worker in the NUC spent some time in the National with all of the current bees in the National)

Any and all advice gratefully received.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Open both colonies to the light and make room at one side in the big box for the nuc frames. Smoke them a little and move the nuc frames into the big box. Close up. Safer option is to cage the queen with a candy plug and place her in the middle of her own brood frames so she has some protection. If there is no flow on, a feed of both colonies the day before will do no harm.

Or buy or borrow a brood box and get a bottle of water with a free newspaper from WH Smiths for a newspaper unite.

 

[Beagle23]

Open both colonies to the light and make room at one side in the big box for the nuc frames. Smoke them a little and move the nuc frames into the big box. Close up. Safer option is to cage the queen with a candy plug and place her in the middle of her own brood frames so she has some protection. If there is no flow on, a feed of both colonies the day before will do no harm.

Or buy or borrow a brood box and get a bottle of water with a free newspaper from WH Smiths for a newspaper unite.

Thanks.

I went for the former, quicker approach. I'm hoping that the fact that the two hives and been in close proximity and that the bees all share the same mother will help. I placed the new queen in the old hive flanked by two frames of friendly bees. I watched for 15 mins and didn't see any fighting so hopefully all is well.

Thanks again