Reuniting when using brood and a half

[BeeBo]

I have done the first stage of an artificial swarm today using the pagden method although have read at least 5 different variations in terms of relative position of original and new hives that it seems it isn't exactly definitive.
I want to eventually reunite the brood boxes as I want to get a decent honey crop this year if possible.
My question is when and how to do the reunite when I have the old queen in the the new (single) brood box with original supers on top on the original site and (hopefully in 2-3weeks time) a new queen and remaining nurse bees in the original brood and a half hive on the new site?
Which queen do I remove and how do I end up with a brood and a half, presumably on the original site?
Also, is it really necessary to do all the moving around of the original hive to get the newly emerging flying bees from the original hive into the new hive if they are going to be reunited anyway? I'm a bit short of space so moving around 3 sides of the new hive will be tricky.

This is using standard Nationals.

 

[sharonh]

Hi,
First, if you only have the one colony, it would be the right way getting a second. Two is always better than one. You will always have the second to fall back on, if anything happened with the first, also good to have a second if you needed a frame from one for the other.
If you really are on for uniting, you need to calculate when new Queen has emerged /mated, then laying before you rid your old queen, in original colony.
All this could take a month & I wouldn't disturb while this is going on.
New queen will be hard to spot as abdomen needs to extend when in full lay.
Do not clip or mark a virgin queen.
Don't be in a hurry to unite. Making sure new queen has mated successfully & laying is first.
When you have established that, then you can decide which queen you want to keep if sticking with one colony.
You mentioned, why for the need to move the hive so much when your planning to unite anyway.
This is done to get all flying bees back to original hive site,so you still get your honey crop. If you had to wait until new queen mated & laying from new hive to unite to get the flying bees back, you'd lose weeks of them working & you'd lose out on that honey.
Sharon

 

[Erichalfbee]

Hi,

You mentioned, why for the need to move the hive so much when your planning to unite anyway.
This is done to get all flying bees back to original hive site,so you still get your honey crop. If you had to wait until new queen mated & laying from new hive to unite to get the flying bees back, you'd lose weeks of them working & you'd lose out on that honey.
Sharon

No that is incidental.
The reason this is done is to reduce the number of bees in your parent colony so that if you leave more than one queen cell there is less likelihood of the colony swarming with the first queen emerging as they are depleted of bees.
If you leave just the one cell then no additional moves are required

 

[Davelin]

When it comes to reuniting it is up to you which queen you keep. If your original queen is getting on a bit and the new one looks to be laying well then probably the new one.... On the other hand if the old queen is a good one then keep her going. It may be a good idea to keep the queen you are getting rid of in a nuc for a bit just in case.

Put all your boxes on the original site separated by newspaper. When all happily combined select the best 11 frames and remove the other box.

If you have frames with honey in you could extract this (can of worms opening here).

 

[BeeBo]

Excellent, thank you all for your replies.

I'm pretty sure I left only one charged queen cell so will give the hive manoeuvres a miss.

i'm still not quite sure about the mecahnics of reuniting - the issue is that I will have three "brood" boxes - two deep boxes ane one shallow (i.e super being used as a brood box) and want to end up with one deep and the shallow - presumably on the original site which is where the single deep box is now. Not sure how to order them when reuniting.

Not looking forward to finding the new queen as it took me an hour and half to find the marked one due to the number of bees. Could I just keep checking until I find eggs and then hoick out the old queen from the other hive before reuniting? Inclined to keep her in reserve if I can as she has been very strong so far and bees are a great temperament.

Just one last question - will the flying bees that were still left in the old hive (there were lots I think as I didn't move the hive until much later than intended so lots had already come back) fly back to the original site after leaving the old hive in its new position today?

 

[Davelin]

Right. Once your new queen is laying ( and laying workers). Find your marked queen and put her in a nuc box with a couple of frames of brood and food. On your original site you will have single brood box q-. Put excluder and newspaper on top of this with some slits in newspaper. Brood and half with new queen on top of this. Once they are combined and all happy sort out your best 11 frames from both brood boxes and put in one with half on top. Shake all the other bees in here and remove surplus frames, making very sure your new queen is not on one of them!

Don't understand your last paragraph but fliers will eventually find their way in somewhere.