[little lion]

Can I shake a queenless hive in front of another hive and let the nurse bees go in and the forgers fly back to their old location?

 

[username00101]

Ehhh.

I've seen thousands of dead bees from a situation like that before.

I wound up doing a shake and plenty of bees from the shaken colony didn't return to the old location, and flew right into the nearest hole.

 

[crofter]

As username suggests, that could be a problem. What you could do is walk them into a separate hive body then do a newspaper combine with the colony you want to add them to. You could also collect them and dump them into the temporary hive body. I have done it this way with a Taranov ramp.

Do a search on Taranov swarm for some different ideas.

 

[GregB]

Can I shake a queenless hive in front of another hive and let the nurse bees go in and the forgers fly back to their old location?

Instead - just shake into an empty pocket next to the target colony (separated by a dummy board or a newspaper with slits and a small passage).
Or similarly - shake them into an empty box above the target colony (separated by a newspaper with few slits and a passage).
Spray them with some sugar water, close, wash your hands.
Young bees will stay; the oriented foragers will go to the old spot within a day (whatever is your plan for them - I don't see what that can be).
Should be no losses.

PS: actually, if you do NOT close the hive right away - the foragers will fly out/away within few minutes (just the issue of robbing possibility to be considered).

You also did not specify the strength of the target colony.
With a weak target you can get away with about anything.

 

[little lion]

I think what I'll do is just combine with newspaper the queenless colony. The target colony probably has less bees, but I'm told that may be okay. Thoughts on that plan?

 

[GregB]

I think what I'll do is just combine with newspaper the queenless colony. The target colony probably has less bees, but I'm told that may be okay. Thoughts on that plan?

Then do it.
What was the hang-up with shaking and all? Not really necessary.

 

[Vance G]

I would do the newspaper combine or generously sprinkle powdered sugar over both units and stack them. That will eliminate most aggression.

 

[little lion]

I think I was trying to split the larger colony into two smaller groups because I thought the numbers might be too large for the smaller queen right colony, but I think I'm okay to do the combine based on info from the state inspector.