United hive woes

[jdee]

Question time again folks

I united a strong queenless hive with a weak queen right hive (queen wasnt laying huge amounts but as this was a weak swarm capture it was too be expected). I placed the queen right hive on the bottom of the combined hives (there was and is only 5 frames that are being used – the rest was undrawn foundation). Anyway things have been going along fine for the last two weeks and I opened the hive up to discover three capped queen cells and still 5 frames of drawn foundation with no new eggs and small amounts of capped brood the rest of the hive is stores (including 10 frames of stores in the upstairs brood box).

I can only surmise that the original queen was a scrub queen that came with the swarm and the strong queenless hive rejected her and have made up these new queen cells. I am also guessing that it is now too late in the season to get a successfully matted queen from the hive (there are still drones present in this and my other two hives).

My other question is will there be any issues with moving some of the full frames of stores down to the bottom brood box. There are a heck of a lot of bees and they are still bring in larges amounts of pollen at the moment – seems this part of Ireland is a good month behind the rest of Ireland.

Any thoughts please

Rgds

JD

 

[Poly Hive]

Have you another hive that you can take a test frame out of?

Some one will most likely have a queen available still...

So test the suspect then see if there is a queen to be had if needed.

BTW I always put my Q+ unit on the top of a paper unite.

PH

 

[Hebeegeebee]

There is still a chance that the queen will get mated.

Why do you want to move the stores? Bees store stores above the brood area. If they want to move them, they will!

 

[Easy Beesy]

BTW I always put my Q+ unit on the top of a paper unite.

PH

hi ph
Re above - is that experience talking, just personal preference, or some other reason?
I think I remember being told to put q+ on bottom to make q- foragers work their way thru q+ BB and pick up pheromones on the way.
Happy to change my procedure if it works better your way.
Eb

 

[Hombre]

I Made a template and put a Q+ 14x12 nuc (with no floor) on top of a 14x12 that was Q- and the next week lifted of the very heavy nuc, only to find that everyone was trying to squeeze in upstairs.

A slight rearrangement of the living arrangements and all was sorted.
= = =

I too am interested in your reasoning PH.

 

[Heather]

Hivemaker has queens

 

[Hivemaker.]

I believe the reasoning is the bees in the Q+ part on top will be keen to get out foraging, as they have brood to feed,so will chew through the paper faster in order to get out and do so.

 

[Poly Hive]

Hivemaker has it on the nail.

Q+ above has the need to get through the paper and get after it. They will of course take the pheromones with them and the uniting process proceeds apace.

PH