reuniting - or joining hives

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Is there enough confusion in uniting bees to allow you to unite a colony from one end of the apiary to a colony at the other end?

Or do I need to unite them to a new apiary or somehow get them beside each other before uniting?

I think the standard advice is to get them nearby.

What I have done is to put the moved hive on top (of the paper), so they don't get out until they realise something rather significant has changed (especially if you delay them with a double thickness of newspaper). So they reset the GPS. And that seems to work for me and movements of up to 10 yards in my garden.
 
I think the standard advice is to get them nearby.

What I have done is to put the moved hive on top (of the paper), so they don't get out until they realise something rather significant has changed (especially if you delay them with a double thickness of newspaper). So they reset the GPS. And that seems to work for me and movements of up to 10 yards in my garden.

Yes : with TBHs the moved hive is furthest from the entrance so the moved bees have to go through the stay at home ones.

Works very well...
 
Hi
I need to unite 2 hives. The queen less hive has not had any eggs since they swarmed at the end of May.
Can I unite them with the hive next to them? or is that to close? Am I better to unite them with a colony I have over 3 miles away?
The queenless colony has more bees in it than the queen right colony.
 
Hi
I need to unite 2 hives. The queen less hive has not had any eggs since they swarmed at the end of May.
Can I unite them with the hive next to them? or is that to close? Am I better to unite them with a colony I have over 3 miles away?
The queenless colony has more bees in it than the queen right colony.

Uniting with next door will be fine. Doesn't matter which way round.
Am about to do the same myself with a hive about 10yds away. In that case I will stick q- on top.
Cazza
 
Do you use a queen excluder or just let her lay were she wants?????

Lay where she wants.. Most hives sort themselves out into clearly defined areas.. I move filled honey to the outer edges of the honey nest, capped honey to outer edges of hive so they don't get honey bound.

Given the lousy cold weather of the past month, that is most definitely not a problem at present.:-( Most hives ended eating most of their honey to survive.

With this heatwave, I expect that to reverse... quickly I hope. No arable here so no OSR but lots of very mixed woods and gardens...and limes...
 
Hi
I need to unite 2 hives. The queen less hive has not had any eggs since they swarmed at the end of May.
Can I unite them with the hive next to them? or is that to close? Am I better to unite them with a colony I have over 3 miles away?
The queenless colony has more bees in it than the queen right colony.
Don't be too hasty, I'd say there would be more than a fair chance they are not queenless.
What is their behaviour like?
 
Uniting with next door will be fine. Doesn't matter which way round.
Am about to do the same myself with a hive about 10yds away. In that case I will stick q- on top.
Cazza

How did you get on?
 
Don't be too hasty, I'd say there would be more than a fair chance they are not queenless.
What is their behaviour like?

There behaviour is very calm. There is a lot of pollen and some honey. Due to inspect this evening.
 
We inspected the hive yesterday evening. There is a lot of honey and pollen. The cells don't look polished out. No eggs. The bees were quite dopey no pollen going in.
 
We added a test frame on Saturday to the hive we think is Q-. left it for 3 days. We checked today and they have not produced queen cells.
So I believe this means there is a queen in the hive, she just has not started laying.
We did a quick inspection of the other frames and found no eggs.
How long before she starts to lay? The swarm was end of May.
When should we check again? Advice please
 
Do you know the date the queen cell would have hatched? You should be able to calculate the last possible dates from there. Queens don't always work to schedule.

If it's any consolation I'm playing the waiting game with one colony too. Although I'm probably being a bit impatient I tried a test frame, which produced only sealed brood so there has to be a queen somewhere, but where she is and when she'll start laying is another matter.

We're in the same part of the country, sort of, and it's easy to forget that it's only been really warm for about a week or so.
 
i united two hives although not sure they mixed well lots of dead bees out side hive I put the queen right box on top and the q- colony on the bottom newspaper method

Hi
I united 2 small hives with good queens, took out the queen (to make up nuc) from the first hive and left for a 2 days, brought in the other Q+ hive (from around 800yds away) after blocking up the night before and placed on top of the Q- hive over newspaper, the Q- hive couldn't be moved as the flyers needed to go home, the Q+ merged wonderfully. Inspected after 3 days and most to the paper eaten away. The point is: doesn't matter which hive is q- top or bottom. The important thing is making sure one is q- and the bottom hive 'home' bees stay in place.
 
Hi
The queen cell was there on the 29th May and gone on the 5th June. Just worried that if she doesn't start laying soon all the bees in the hive will be dead :-( Thanks for your post :)
 

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