Should I do This?

[Budvar]

Two hives. One queenless since end of May that I've been aware. Requeened and queen rejected outright. I've tried all the tricks, added brood, etc. Now, not much but fair amount of honey on top deep, fair amount of drones, and still fair amount of workers. They beard a lot on sunny days.

Other hive was my strong one. Two deeps, always active. I put a super on and went camping. One week ago, returned from camping only to watch them swarm in 105 deg weather that nite. Couldn't retrieve. Rechecked yesterday and found no eggs or brood, but did find a queen!

So...I combined the hives with the double screen trick. Thought I would leave them that way for a week or two, then take the laying queen hive and do a shakeout in front of the swarmed/requeened hive.

Any thoughts? Am I playing with danger here?

despite the problems, I'm having fun with my bees, and learning so much on the fly. Having Beesource forum has been a great help in my education.

Chris
Burbank, Wa.

[Putz]

Don't shake it out right in front of the hive, shake it out 50 or 100 feet away instead and let them fly back.

[BjornBee]

Why combine with a screen and then do a shake after two weeks?

Just combine the hives with a sheet of newspaper, and break apart after two weeks adding a queen to the queenless half. The queenright colony will deal with any laying workers.

BTW...you can listen all you want about dealing with adding brood frames, shaking bees, and all the other "tricks". At least with laying worker hives, the only way that deals with it 100% is to combine with a queenright colony and then break apart later when the queens pheromones shut down the laying workers. Anything else will mean wasted huge amounts of time, labor, cost of dead queens, etc. Laying hives, and even hives that do not have laying workers, can drag on for months.

[D Coates]

Man, you've got alot going on there. Your queenless hive may have a queen that you aren't aware of. I'd drop in some eggs if I could and see how they treat them, however since you've apparently got a virgin queen in your other hive that isn't laying yet you're kind of in a pickle. I'm not familiar with the double screen trick so I can't really speak about that one.

Is the queenless hive aggressive or lethargic? Not having a queen for that long should make them pretty mean. If they aren't mean or really lethargic I'd search for eggs again before you do anything, unless you want to wait for your new queen to start laying well (about 10 days or so). If you have no eggs and you don't want to wait for some eggs I'd combine.

I personally wouldn't do any shakeout with the one queen you do know you have. Just my 2 cents, so you can take it for what it worth. I usually have at least a couple homemade nucs (from swarm cells) so I can combine/steal eggs or larva/boost populations in situations like this.

[Budvar]

Thanks everyone for your input.

Both hives are acting the way they usually do, although they're basically one hive, separated by a double screen.

D., I've been looking in the queenless hive for weeks now, no eggs or brood. Well, I did see a couple, two weeks back. No queen cells, either. They are Italians, and no, not really mean.

Maybe Bjornbee...perhaps I can combine with a newspaper next week, remove the screen, and order a queen at the same time? Only problem is that our area is 90-100 deg F. Could present problems with mailing.