uniting a queenless hive

[flathead]

I found a hive today that is queenless.

We have several swarms we caught lately and I was thinking of uniting one of them with the larger queenless colony.

Whats the best way to unite a small queenright hive with a larger queenless hive?

Or should I just wait on a replacement queen?

Comments welcome.

[Troy]

A standard newspaper combine should work just fine.

Just put the queenless hive body on top of the queen right hive and leave a sheet of newspaper in between to slow down their introductions.

The only time I've had trouble with this is if the queenless hive has been without a queen for long enough to develop some laying workers. If that happens you have a different problem on your hands.

[tecumseh]

a stronger queen right hive will take care off laying workers in my experience without fail.

of course the real questions are: how absolutely certain are you that the swarm has no queen? and how large is the swarm?

the first suggest that the queen within a swarm is not often so easy to locate and the second is that depending on the size of the swarm you may have several options available (less option with smaller swarm, more options with larger swarm).

[odfrank]

Expose all frames of bees to open light for a few minutes and then combine.

[flathead]

The hive that is queenless is 2 deeps and a medium high. I saw no brood or eggs during a full inspection. This hive swarmed earlier this year and the new queen must have failed. There was a large population of drones.

I have several swarms in 5 frame nucs that have laying queens and I want to move them into 10 frame boxes anyway.

I figured the queenless hive has a force of bees and plenty of resources so I can just combine one of the smaller nucs with the bigger hive instead of losing the larger queenless hive.

I did the newspaper thing before but it was adding queenless bees to the top of a queenright hive.

In this situation I need to add the five frames of the nuc to the full size colony.

[Michael Bush]

>Expose all frames of bees to open light for a few minutes and then combine.

I have not heard this before. Could you elaborate?