Queenless Hive

[TWG1572]

So I checked my hives today following three weeks on the road, and confirmed that one of my hives that I suspected as being queenless with the last check really was.

This was my biggest boomer this spring, unfortunately I think it swarmed (possibly multiple times) and was not able to re-queen for whatever reason.

So, I have a hive with a deep and a medium full of honey. The bottom deep still has some room. No laying workers, but the population is obviously falling as it is getting pretty old.

I have a queen ordered for delivery on Wed. What do you think my chances are of getting this colony back on track? I have some other hives I intend to steal some capped brood from. I was thinking I could split/combine but I only have one beeyard so was assuming all the bees would drift back to the old hive.

Any thoughts?

[BEES4U]

Yes,
take the hive that's low on bees about 30' away from its location, shake the bees out on the grass and use the drawn out frames for your divides.
Good luck,
Ernie

[Ross]

No need to shake them out if you don't have laying workers. Shake in some bees and add some brood. Or do a newspaper combine and resplit in a few weeks.

[luvin honey]

I made a split from 2 hives to form a third. They are all within 4 feet of each other. I pulled 3 bars of brood from each hive and the new hive now has a queen and seems to be thriving. I think I ended up with mostly nurse bees on the brood comb and therefore no "drift." Good luck whatever you do!

[RayMarler]

I think if you grab a couple frames of sealed brood with adhearing bees from your other hives and put in the queenless one with the introduced new queen should work out fine, so long as it is not a laying worker hive.