combining with supers on

[trapperman]

I split 2 nucs from my hive, then a week later found i had accidently split the queen off in one of them, i went through original hive on double brood and found more queen cells, so i split the brood boxes, now main hive is in 4.

Anyway i went through them today the old queen is doing fine, and now in a full brood box, and the 2 nucs now have laying queens.

The cell i left in the original hive with all the flying bees i think has failed as no eggs yet (i will give another week just in case)

If on next inspection still no eggs i want to combine one of the new queens back into this hive.

My question is how to go about it, i can put the nuc into a full brood and use newspaper but the original hive has 2 supers on it 1 is almost full and could be removed the other is half full, could i put brood with queen between old brood and supers with newspaper top and bottem? or should i clear the supers then combine then put supers back on?

Any advise?

 

[VEG]

Put a test frame in to make sure there is no queen in there.

 

[MuswellMetro]

one method is to treat it just as a queen replacement

find the new queen and take her on two brood frames. spray the outside of these frames with rose water or lemon water, remove the old queen if there and two brood frames and spray the gap

place new queen and two frames in the gap

combine the rest of the frames by spraying and placing in a sprayed small colney to bolster it

 

[MuswellMetro]

one method is to treat it just as a queen replacement

find the new queen and take her on two brood frames. spray the outside of these frames with rose water or lemon water, remove the old queen if there and two brood frames and spray the gap

place new queen and two frames in the gap

combine the rest of the frames by spraying and placing in a sprayed small colney to bolster it

alternatively just combine above the supers,

you will loose a few more bees with supers on as the bees in the super are more likely to see the new bees as robbing intruders but not many

a demarre swarm control has brood above and below supers and you also get a few fights on the two Queen excluders

 

[Midland Beek]

I would not do a thing with your main stock until you know its status. It can take up to 4 weeks for a queen to mate and start laying, and if she doesn't mate she will neverthelss start laying eggs. At such point, then you can decide what to do ... and a queen that is laying eggs is a whole lot more findable. Seen as you have other colonies, a test frame is also an option.

It is unusual for a colony to be properly/hopelessly queenless unless the beekeeper has made balls-ups.

 

[barratt_sab]

It is unusual for a colony to be properly/hopelessly queenless unless the beekeeper has made balls-ups.

Sounds like you've been looking over my shoulder!