Uniting Nuc with Queenless hive

[dickbowyer]

I have had a hive with dwindling brood since mid June, which produced no queen cells with a test frame and had some new sealed brood and some capped queen cells later in mid July (? supercedure) but subsequent inspection (by bee inspector) ten days later revealed no eggs or larvae and taken down queen cells so possibility of virgin or early mated queen existed. A week later, still no eggs so went for buying mated queen option put into a nuc box of 2 brood/3 store frames and placed right next too this hive.

What next? Assuming bought Queen is ok in nuc adjacent to hive, how do I combine assuming the hive remains broodless? Experienced Beek I bought the local Queen from suggested taking hive a way away and shaking frames of all bees which would come back to nucleus which could then be made up to a full hive with store frames from the bad hive. Sounds similar to method of ridding a hive of drone laying workers but not seen described in any of the many books I have read. Does it sound sensible?

 

[Polyanwood]

I was favour something milder. What experienced beek suggested might work, but is more risky for your newly purchased queen. If you have another brood box, just put a few sheets of newspaper on top of old hive, remove queen excluder, Make a few slits with hive tool in newspaper, put empty BB on top and put in the frames from the nuc, cover with crownboard and close up.

less risk to queen this way.

make sure you are queenless though. i combined a nuc wiht a queen a few weeks ago with a hive I thought was queenless only to find this week the replacement queen gone, but the cells were polished... they had killed the queen because there was a virgin in there.