Reuniting a queenless cell builder with the queenright colony? Tips?

[Keth Comollo]

Ok, need some tips from the pros. My first graft was with a queenright colony but after watching the success of Mike Palmer with queenless colonies I tried one and it worked much better on royal jelly production and the misses were only due to my poor grafting technique.

Tomorrow I pull the cells and put them in the nucs I hope to overwinter.

Any tips on reuniting the queenless and queenright parts of this hive? If I make sure there are no emergency cells in the queenless part I think I am okay just stacking them back together and that is my current plan. Does anyone do newspaper combine for this? Keep me from making a mistake!

Loving the queen rearing game.

[Joseph Clemens]

I am, for sure, doing things a fair bit differently than would be done in your neck-of-the-woods.

I just use the queenless bees from my cell builder colonies to strengthen weaker colonies, or nucs. So far they are always assimilated without incident. But I almost never disestablish them, just periodically clean them out to start again with fresh nurse bees.

[Michael Palmer]

Should be okay Keth.

[Keth Comollo]

Thanks Michael. I will just stack them back into the super hive and let them make honey.

Joseph, If I had any weak colonies that would be a good idea!

[theriverhawk]

I would NOT just stack them!! 50/50 shot that they fight it out if you just plop the queenless box on top of the queenright gang. I newspaper combine every time I put a queen cell builder back or I leave a queen cell or two in there and get a new hive out of it.

[AmericasBeekeeper]

I just put them back or in my weakest coloony. If you have any doubt shake the bees in front of a hive. They will be gladly accepted.

[gmcharlie]

Trick I learned from Gardners is to coat them with HFCS (or sugar syrup) then you can dump them anywhere you like and they will be accepted. Its how I fill my queen mateing boxes also. Coat them till they are a sticky gooeye mess. by the time they clean themselves off they will usualy stay put and not drift back to the old location.