Recombining a hive

[sjt]

I took 2 frames of brood and bees into a nuc yesterday to introduce a new queen. For various reasons that didn't happen, what would be the best way to recombine them to the original hive. It's a strong colony with 3 supers on.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I would just bung them back in

 

[enrico]

I took 2 frames of brood and bees into a nuc yesterday to introduce a new queen. For various reasons that didn't happen, what would be the best way to recombine them to the original hive. It's a strong colony with 3 supers on.

A quick squirt of air freshener across the top of the brood box, a quick squirt into the frames to be added and pop them altogether. Job done
E

 

[sjt]

Thanks! Hoped that would work rather than the newspaper merge route. It will be 36 hours they will have been seperated and not the nicest of bees hence the wish to requeen

 

[Anduril]

Thanks! Hoped that would work rather than the newspaper merge route. It will be 36 hours they will have been seperated and not the nicest of bees hence the wish to requeen

For that length of time you won't need Air freshener, but if they are not the nicest then use the air freshener to inhibit any alarm pheremones, or use strong tobacco in your smoker.

 

[sjt]

Recombined with smoke and air freshener........all happy, bees and me! Thanks for the advice.

 

[Beagle23]

Accidental success.

I mentioned in another thread that I had acted prematurely in replacing what I thought was a missing queen, the outcome was positive, here's what happened:

I made a plait after the old queen swarmed from my main hive, putting one QC into a nuc and leaving one in place. Both hatched, but believing the new queen from the main hive to be dead, I decided on a fairly risky reintroduction of my surviving queen by lifting her and two frames of brood and workers from the nuc and just inserting them into the hive, hoping for the best.

So I removed two frames from brood box and replaced these with two from the nuc, leaving the frames just outside so that the workers could transfer the stores. As evening approached I went to shake off these two frames only to discovered the not so dead queen #2. With nowhere else to put them I dropped the two frames into the nuc to let the bees sort it out for themselves.
In short: I'd taken two frames from each hive and swapped them over complete with attending workers and their queens.

So a week on and I have two healthy queens and a lot of capped brood. No sign of any bee casualties.

An important factor in this may be that the queens are sisters and so genetically identical, and all of the workers are sisters to both the queens also.

So no drama but a fortunate and interesting result (at least I think so).

 

[Erichalfbee]

So a week on and I have two healthy queens and a lot of capped brood. No sign of any bee casualties.

An important factor in this may be that the queens are sisters and so genetically identical, and all of the workers are sisters to both the queens also.

More importantly those queens were both laying.

 

[Beefriendly]

An important factor in this may be that the queens are sisters and so genetically identical, and all of the workers are sisters to both the queens also.
.

Not sure how you come to this conclusion.
Any queen derived from eggs laid by the "mother queen" can have been generated from sperm from any of the multiple drones she originally mated with and contain either half of her own genes.
Unless you have been doing a crafty bit of II.

 

[Beagle23]

Not sure how you come to this conclusion.
Any queen derived from eggs laid by the "mother queen" can have been generated from sperm from any of the multiple drones she originally mated with and contain either half of her own genes.
Unless you have been doing a crafty bit of II.

That's a fair point. I just sort of make it up as I go along...