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All,
Two of my hives are struggling. One is a split I made that is taking forever to build up. It has a laying queen but the hive population is not high. Last week, I added a capped brood frame from another hive to this one to get it to build up. My other hive had good numbers about a month ago but is now queenless. When I inspected it yesterday, they had just sealed a queen cell but the hive looks like it was robbed out.
My question is should I let the queenless hive continue trying to make a queen this late in the season? I noticed drones are being kicked out of the other hives and wonder if there is enough time for the new queen to develop, get mated and start laying (around 20 days). Our goldenrod flow has not started yet but will begin in about 2 weeks or so. I could combine them so they have enough numbers to take advantage of the upcoming flow.
What would the more experienced beeks do in this situation. Should I combine?
Thanks!
Two of my hives are struggling. One is a split I made that is taking forever to build up. It has a laying queen but the hive population is not high. Last week, I added a capped brood frame from another hive to this one to get it to build up. My other hive had good numbers about a month ago but is now queenless. When I inspected it yesterday, they had just sealed a queen cell but the hive looks like it was robbed out.
My question is should I let the queenless hive continue trying to make a queen this late in the season? I noticed drones are being kicked out of the other hives and wonder if there is enough time for the new queen to develop, get mated and start laying (around 20 days). Our goldenrod flow has not started yet but will begin in about 2 weeks or so. I could combine them so they have enough numbers to take advantage of the upcoming flow.
What would the more experienced beeks do in this situation. Should I combine?
Thanks!