To unite or not to unite?

[curry756]

Hello,

Hope everyone and their bees are all doing well.

I am looking to push my bees hard for a decent crop this summer. And I am trying to decide whether to unite or not? So I'm after some advice.

My current setup:
--------------------
Hive#1
14x12 National. Primary swarm collected end of May - Queen laying well
No Super

Hive#2
14x12 National. Primary swarm collected end of May - Queen laying well
No Super

Hive#3
14x12 National. Primary swarm collected this week - Queen status unknown
No Super

Hive#4
Standard National. Caste Swarm collected end of May - Queen mated and laying well
Supered (one super) and started drawing and filling

Hive#5
Standard National. Caste Swarm collected end of May - Queen mated and laying well
Supered (one super) and started drawing

Hive#6
14x12 poly Nuc. Overwintered bees but numbers have been dropping, so moved to nuc. Bad Chalkbrood and a few duff queens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I am trying to figure out the best way to get the maximum amount of honey over the next 2 months. And I also don't want 6 hives - 4 at a push.

I was thinking would it be possible to unite
Hive#1 and Hive#4 to run with double Brood
and
Hive#2 and Hive#5 to run with double Brood
them add supers to both?

This would give me less hives - which is what I want, but it would also give me bigger colonies - so hopefully more honey production over the next honey flow?

Hives#3 and Hive#6 I will play by ear - I might unite them, but I don't want to infect a good colony with chalkbrood. The swarm is too new to do anything with and the other colony if fragile. This is a separate discussion to be had though and I don't want to distract away from my my main questions?

What do you guys think of my plan - good, bad or ugly?

Thanks in advance.
Paul

 

[jd101k2000]

I don't know... but I think you will find that chalk brood (at this time of year in a hot summer) is more down to genetics than 'infection'. I re-queened a chalk brood infected colony last year. The new queen's genetics (workers) sorted it all out.

As long as there is no other problem, and you want reduction, I think that uniting #6 with another colony seems like a good idea (and squish queen #6).

 

[enrico]

My wife's birthday, had a bottle of fizzy stuff...... Don't really care!

 

[Erichalfbee]

The one thing missing is number of frames of brood in each box

 

[oliver90owner]

A reduction in forager numbers for the next three weeks for a start. No idea of when you expect your crop to arrive. They coud be starving before then.

Pushing your bees hard will likely be more trouble than worth, what with a lot of mixed/unknown genetics and I am allfor allowing them to perform, not pushing. But your choice. Why not go the whole hog and unite the other two to those clonies as well. Just two big colonies might be the answer.

You do need to ascertain the problem with hive 6. If def chalk brood get it united, but if an underlying issue, sort it out.

So far, you have little to go on as to which queens to cull, excepting perhaps number 6. Good luck with your choices.

 

[Toffeesmum]

Happy Birthday to V. What are you doing on-line reading bee stuff?? You should be enjoying the weather and V's b'day!! Am on ferry just coming back into Portsmouth after 11 days away, wonder what my bees have been upto?! A x

 

[curry756]

Hey thanks for the replies.

A reduction in forager numbers for the next three weeks for a start. No idea of when you expect your crop to arrive. They coud be starving before then.

@oliver90owner I'm a tad confused though. How would there be a reduction in forager numbers? I am talking about joining the hives to make a double brood colony? No workers would be lost and no one should starve. I was going to use the newspaper method, so it should be done in a couple of days. I was also going to let the queens sort it out themselves. From what I've read the stronger queen usually wins. I was hoping that once joined the forager workforce would be significantly higher and this would result in a larger crop?

@Erichalfbee - the brood frames are up at 8 and above on colonies 1,2,4,5

@enrico - haha enjoy

@Toffeesmum - welcome back. Hopefully nothing too eventful happened with the bees while you were away

@jd101k2000 - yeah I need to decide what to do with this colony. Uniting 6 with 3 is a possibility once 3 have settled in.

 

[oliver90owner]

Daw a time-line with numbers. All will become clear, hopefully.

 

[ratcatcher]

From what I've read the stronger queen usually wins. .

have your queens read the same book?? would be buggered if it was a draw and they both died wouldn't it??
far better to pinch one out surely??

 

[oliver90owner]

From what I've read the stronger queen usually wins. .

Quite right. Just unfortunate if the 'strongest' queen is not the one you want. Think here a virgin (which may never, ever, lay a fertiised egg) versus a plump, slower moving, good laying queen (which has already been producing the goods). Whatever the discussion, I am with ratcatcher on this one.

 

[curry756]

Daw a time-line with numbers. All will become clear, hopefully.

Nope still not getting it - apologies if I am missing something obvious:

So I want to perform 2 unites ASAP if my logic is right - both situations are the same, but I have detailed them for clarity

First Unite:
Hive#1 and Hive#4 to run with double Brood. Both these hives contain 8-10 frames of BIAS and a Queen.
Hive#1 has a queen of unknown age but it likely to not be this years as it came from what looked like a primary swarm
Hive#4 has a queen of unknown age but it likely to be this years as it came from what looked like a caste swarm - also she took about 3 weeks to start laying, which also implies she had to mate first.

Second Unite:
Hive#2 and Hive#5 to run with double Brood. Both these hives contain 8-10 frames of BIAS and a Queen.
Hive#2 has a queen of unknown age but it likely to not be this years as it came from what looked like a primary swarm
Hive#5 has a queen of unknown age but it likely to be this years as it came from what looked like a caste swarm - also she took about 3 weeks to start laying, which also implies she had to mate first.

So after what ratcatcher and yourself have said - I agree that the bees don't read books so it is better for me to pick the queen to run with. I will take out the out the 2 primary swarm queens and run with the queens in Hive#4 and Hive#5 as these are more likely to be this years queens.

So if I unite two medium sized colonies together using the newspaper method I cant see how there would be a reduction in foragers. The unite only takes (give or take) two/three days, so after this period we should be back up to maximum numbers. Both colonies to be united have a good number of frames of brood, so these will hatch as usual and forager numbers wont be affected.

Unless I am missing something or you are referring to recent swarm I collected in Hive#3, which as I stated is a separate conversation to be had.

"Hives#3 and Hive#6 I will play by ear - I might unite them, but I don't want to infect a good colony with chalkbrood. The swarm is too new to do anything with and the other colony if fragile. This is a separate discussion to be had though and I don't want to distract away from my my main questions"

Thanks in advance guys - really appreciate the help, suggestions and all the comments

 

[Duchy]

I have a hive on double brood. I find the amount of bees in the full hive of double brood quite scary.....(they are quite bad tempered as well, but finding the queen is difficult, when I struggle to open the hive, without them coming after me!). I want to go back to single brood box....

 

[johnnie1uk]

My wife's birthday, had a bottle of fizzy stuff...... Don't really care!

Im Sorry, but that's not good enough

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Happy Birthday to V. What are you doing on-line reading bee stuff?? You should be enjoying the weather and V's b'day!! Am on ferry just coming back into Portsmouth after 11 days away, wonder what my bees have been upto?! A x

Swarming

 

[beeno]

Hi Curry,
As with everything beekeeping it is not perfect. I can only assume that Oliver is referring to the fact that even uniting bees by the 'newspaper' method sometimes leads to collateral damage i.e. the foragers fight and kill each other.

 

[curry756]

Hi Curry,
As with everything beekeeping it is not perfect. I can only assume that Oliver is referring to the fact that even uniting bees by the 'newspaper' method sometimes leads to collateral damage i.e. the foragers fight and kill each other.

Ahh ok - so I did miss something Thanks for pointing that out.

Guess thats a downside of only being in my first year - onwards and upwards (hopefully)

 

[oliver90owner]

How many times have I told people to stop assuming - because they will most likely be wrong. Some, it seems, never learn or are slooww learners.

Wrong again, as is usual. Maybe thinking needs brain effort whereas assuming does not?

 

[curry756]

How many times have I told people to stop assuming - because they will most likely be wrong. Some, it seems, never learn or are slooww learners.

Wrong again, as is usual. Maybe thinking needs brain effort whereas assuming does not?

I can only assume as you haven't actually given me a choice. Can you shed any light onto what you are thinking? or shall I 'assume' you are just being awkward?

I'm newish and asking for help! I've read books - which in your eyes is wrong, I'v read forums and peoples opinions, but they all differ. So how can anyone learn from people with experience if these people aren't actually giving the reasons and thought process behind their answers? Surely this is the natural way of learning?

This forum, in my opinion, is becoming a joke and therefore unusable! - the few people on here who are experienced just gloat that they know everything and are always telling people how crap they are whilst not actually giving these new people a change to actually learn from them.

Either help me or don't - its not hard!

 

[johnnie1uk]

I can only assume as you haven't actually given me a choice. Can you shed any light onto what you are thinking? or shall I 'assume' you are just being awkward?

I'm newish and asking for help! I've read books - which in your eyes is wrong, I'v read forums and peoples opinions, but they all differ. So how can anyone learn from people with experience if these people aren't actually giving the reasons and thought process behind their answers? Surely this is the natural way of learning?

This forum, in my opinion, is becoming a joke and therefore unusable! - the few people on here who are experienced just gloat that they know everything and are always telling people how crap they are whilst not actually giving these new people a change to actually learn from them.

Either help me or don't - its not hard!

Well said!

 

[curry756]

I have a hive on double brood. I find the amount of bees in the full hive of double brood quite scary.....(they are quite bad tempered as well, but finding the queen is difficult, when I struggle to open the hive, without them coming after me!). I want to go back to single brood box....

Bugger - I was thinking that this might be the case. Its good to hear from someone who has a double brood setup. I was thinking just to unite for the remainder of the summer honey flow, and then see about knocking back down
to a single brood during autumn by creating a couple of nuc's to over winter.

One stronger colony is better than two average colonies (with my thought process). So hoping for clarification.

As mentioned its my first year, so just want to see what others are doing before committing myself to something that I perhaps shouldn't be doing.