uniting a nucleus with a full hive

[justsmith]

Got a queenless full hive which is having problems making a new queen and nucleus near by which has a laying queen.

If the queenless hive does not get a laying queen in two weeks i want to merge them and was wondering the best way.

 

[Swift Nick]

I did this with some colonies, put a brood box on top of the original brood box, newspaper & queen excluder in between the two, then transferred the frames & bees from the nuc into the top brood box, within a few days they had merged & the queen was OK.
I then transfered the queen below the queen excluder, filled the rest of the top brood box with comb, the brood emerged & the bees filled the top box with honey, which I recently extracted.
It seemed to work out OK.

 

[Swarm]

If you use the newspaper method, maybe put a travel screen on the top box in these temps.