Combining a Hive with a Small Nuc

[jenkinsbrynmair]

great

thanks for bearing with me and re-answering that

how long between killing q in angry mob and uniting - kill am and unite that eve or leave q- for a day or so first?

Either immediately or when hive hopelessly queenless.
Putting a QX over the bottom hive is also a good ide - stops the queen accidentally wandering over to the Q- side before they are completely consolidated as a colony

 

[Curly green fingers]

Either immediately or when hive hopelessly queenless.
Putting a QX over the bottom hive is also a good ide - stops the queen accidentally wandering over to the Q- side before they are completely consolidated as a colony

Jbm when using air freshener you spray in-between boxes just as your going to unite ?

 

[Cuckmere couple]

Either immediately or when hive hopelessly queenless.
Putting a QX over the bottom hive is also a good ide - stops the queen accidentally wandering over to the Q- side before they are completely consolidated as a colony

yes

i will add QE above the bottom box

will it be ok to leave 3-4 frames of brood in upper q+ colony and end up double brooding?

 

[Swarm]

Jbm when using air freshener you spray in-between boxes just as your going to unite ?

Spray into bottom box, spray into other box and unite.

 

[Curly green fingers]

Spray into bottom box, spray into other box and unite.

Cheers Steve , ill be using some "glade" it's calm tomorrow but only max temp 13c and sunny intervals the garden is well sucleded , I'm 50/50 if the conditions will be ok but I need to do it .
The unites fine it's finding the queen and killing her when the weather might not be Ideal.


Sent from my Nokia 1 using Tapatalk

 

[Swift Nick]

Yes, one of the experienced beeks recommended it a few weeks back (have a look at my previous posts- there aren’t many). It did surprise me, it worked OK. The only difference was the bottom box last time was hopelessly Q-, this one isn’t. I shall check for the queen at the weekend , if all OK, check for Q cells, and then decide if to consolidate or double BB.

Checked the newspaper over super unite this afternoon, all was good, the queen in the upper brood box is alive & laying.
I consolidated them to one brood box, as it’s 14 x 12.
I then created another 5 frame nuc from the left over frames, 1 frame of pollen, 1 frame of honey, 2 frames of sealed brood and one frame of eggs and larva and some extra bees. I will see if they produce an emergency queen, and let her populate the colony for now, then replace her with one of the queens I am going to rear in July. Alternatively, if the emergency queen fails I have another queen right nuc I can combine with to make a full colony.
So in the end the nuc didn’t really add bees, it just enabled me to get the queen accepted.

 

[Cuckmere couple]

posted in wrong thread so here again


so i united yesterday having killed the queen from the angry mob and placed the more placid crowd above

just a thought....will the lower box start drawing q cells and make it hard for integration?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

posted in wrong thread so here again


so i united yesterday having killed the queen from the angry mob and placed the more placid crowd above

just a thought....will the lower box start drawing q cells and make it hard for integration?

they should be mixing within a few hours so the pheremone should stop therm panicking

 

[Cuckmere couple]

cheers JB

 

[masterBK]

I sometimes find a few emergency cells when I use an excluder to hold the paper down but the bees usually destroy them after a successfull unite but if these cells are still present when I sort the brood frames down to one BC then I break them down.

 

[Cuckmere couple]

thanks MBK

that was going to be my approach so helpful

 

[mintmoth]

I united a nuc with a larger colony today over newspaper, and when I got home I realised I 'd forgotten to put any slits in the paper for the bees too start chewing away at it. Will they still chew through it anyway, or do I need to go back tomorrow and put some slits in it? The nuc colony doesn't have much in the way of stores to keep them going.

edit - I'm going to leave them. Checked out Dave Cushman's site and between him and RP the consensus is it doesn't really matter, they'll just unite slower.

 

[eltalia]

[...]
Edit - I'm going to leave them. Checked out Dave Cushman's site and between him and RP the consensus is it doesn't really matter, they'll just unite slower.

Yes... the slit method or pinholes simply speeds up phereomone drift and so
is actually a tool to be selected, or n0t.
An example being where two hopelessly queenless are united, you slit.
Where two colonys made queenless and combined on the same day, no slit.

Bill