Uniting colonies - have I screwed it up?

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Mushy Bees

New Bee
Joined
Jun 15, 2010
Messages
30
Reaction score
0
Location
Hampshire
Hive Type
14x12
Number of Hives
4
Hello

Yesterday I combined two colonies and think I may have got it wrong...

Colony 1.
Found it queenless on it's first inspection. There were queen cells being made and no definately no eggs or larvae (I was told there was a laying queen in there!). Four frames of bees on 14" x 12"

Colony 2
A small caste swarm with a 1 full frame of emerging brood. Two and a half frames of bees on standard DN4 frames housed in a swarm box (like a nuc).

I sprayed all the frames and bees with light syrup containg a little lemongrass oil. Then put the brood frames and bees in the middle of the queenless 14 x12s and moved the hive to the space between where the two hives originally were (about 2 foot away from each).

After a few hours there were about 10 dead bees outside and though this wasn't too bad. Then to my horror I found a little further away baby "furry" bees being dumped!
I haven't managed to check today how they are doing and dread looking in there. Will they kill the queen after the baby slaughter!!!

What are my chances???:ack2:

Pete
 
Did you not use the neswpaper method ?
If you spray them you need 3 colonies uniting rather than 2,
3 causes confusion while 2 can start a war.
 
I thought spraying the bees with sugar solution or dusting with icing sugar was "the other" way to do it.
There are about a hundred dead bees out there now and I'm just hoping the carnage is over and not on-going.

Maybe I'll try the newspaper method next time!
 
Lemongrass spraying and similar sucks. Instead, fit newspaper vertically. Direct uniting in peak season is playing with fire, and you can end up with every single bee in the weaker of two colonies killed.
 
By fitting newspaper vertically, do you mean like putting it in between the frames - old and new??
 
You have to make space inside a brood box. Combs of one stock on one side. Fit newspaper vertically with drawing pins and make holes. Put combs of other stock into the other side.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top