Joining two incompatible hives

[ShinySideUp]

Well, that worked...mostly.

I united the hives using newspaper with a few small holes punched through with a nail and went in today to see how it had gone, remove what's left of the newspaper and put bee escapes in to empty the top BB.

All the bees seem to be getting on OK, all except the 500 to 800 that seem to have been dumped out of the hive and now lie in a mostly dead pile of soggy bees (it's been raining).

So I'm not sure if it has been a roaring success, an absolute disaster or more likely, something in between. There is certainly not a hives-worth of bees in the pile so most of them seem to getting on. I looked to see if they were drones, they were not, so some sort of carnage has occurred.

I'll take the top brood box off tomorrow and settle them down for the winter, I have to leave it to them now as there is nothing more I can do. I'm certainly not going to try to search through all those bees for a queen so perhaps I'll leave them until mid-october and a warm day and see if I can see some eggs -- fingers crossed.

On a more optimistic note, I received and assembled a new hive for the nuc and will transfer them into that tomorrow, weather permitting.

 

[pargyle]

Welll ... sounds like it turned out OK ...it's all a learning curve.

 

[enrico]

That many dead suggest a bit of a battle, a flaw somewhere. Hope they survive the winter
E

 

[Anduril]

One reason why I don't puncture the paper.

 

[ShinySideUp]

One reason why I don't puncture the paper.

Yes, I'm wishing I hadn't. Even if the bees underneath didn't see any reason to move the paper, the bees on the top have every reason to find a way out.

Well I removed the top brood box today and there were no dead bees sitting on the dividing crown board (with the bee escapes in) and the small pile outside the hive hadn't got any bigger so I thnk all is fine now. There were many bees trying to get in and out of the entrance, so many that I had to remove the entrance restrictor especially as tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and relatively warm so they'll be very busy.

In case anyone's wondering about space, the brood box is 14 x 12 and there is a nadir under it so I'm not short of room.

If I have to do it again I think I've learnt some the pitfalls.