Squish & Leave or Squish & Combine

megadyptes · May 6, 2018

I've a hive 14x12 hive that seems to be struggling to get beyond 4 to 5 frames of brood. Coupled with this is an increasingly feisty nature that's resulted in a bracelet of stings this afternoon.

I've a second hive on 8x12 that's going gangbusters, currently filling a super/week and was artificially swarmed today as a number of near sealed queen cells were found.

I'm tempted to newspaper merge the AS with the 14x12 (having removed the temperamental queen) as I don't particularly want to be accumulating more hives at the moment. Is this a viable way forward, or am I better off just removing the queen from the 14x12 and hope the next queen they raise finds some nicer fellas and calms down?

Only a couple of years into the beekeeping malarky so any advice gratefully received!

Marton · May 7, 2018

There’s no way I’d want to take the risk of the “Nasty” Queen’s genes being perpetuated. With that many stings she needs to go.

Merge them (it sounds like they may need the 14*12) with the Queen right part of the AS split.

You can then split again, a Nuc would be a safety net to keep what seems like a good at of genes.

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jenkinsbrynmair · May 7, 2018

Unite.
No point in just killing the queen and allowing them to raise an emergency queen from the same gene pool.

megadyptes · May 8, 2018

I'm assuming they'd break through the newspaper in fairly short order (within a day given I put a few small slits in it) but removing a significant quantity that allows mixing will take a few days. How long should I leave it before checking to see how they're getting along and trying to confine the queen to the larger brood box.

jenkinsbrynmair · May 8, 2018

megadyptes said:
I'm assuming they'd break through the newspaper in fairly short order (within a day given I put a few small slits in it) but removing a significant quantity that allows mixing will take a few days. How long should I leave it before checking to see how they're getting along and trying to confine the queen to the larger brood box.

put a queen excluder over the newspaper so that the queen doesn't get into the queenless side to quickly. A couple of days and the bees should be fully united so you can then go in and move her down to the 14x12 box.