A quick recap from our last blog. Poly hive is queenright, nuc is queenright but the wooden hive appears to be queenless.
Consequently, the decision was made to unite the nuc with the bees in the wooden hive. Our thinking was that this would overcome the problem of overcrowding in the nuc and give the existing bees in the wooden hive a queen.
After due consideration, we decided to use the newspaper unite method. The first problem was that we had no spare brood box. We had a spare super and made a second frame that with the super was the same size as a brood box.
Next, we remove the super on the wooden hive and placed the newspaper on top of the queen excluder. Using the hive tool we made some small holes in the newspaper. The brood box was placed on top of the newspaper and the frames from the nuc carefully placed in the brood box in the same position as in the nuc. The crown board was replaced along with the roof.
Early the next morning evidence that the bees were chewing through the paper could be heard. The bees in the lower brood box were still actively flying to and from the hive.
The next morning the ground around the wooden hive looked like a scene from the D-Day landings. Dead bees were everywhere, the apiary was a place of carnage. What had gone so wrong?
Was the original colony in position of a virgin queen who had yet to make a mating flight? Had the queen pheromones in the brood box above not dissipated into the lower box quick enough. We can only speculate.
The task of uniting the two colonies was now quite easy. The frames in the center of the original brood box were replaced with the ones from the box above. The queen excluded was placed on the brood box and the cleared super placed back on top of the queen excluder, then the crown board and roof.
Where had it so gone so very wrong?
On reflection perhaps firstly, way back when we took the first queen cells down. Secondly, not allowing enough time for the virgin queens to emerge and for the mating flights. We had not considered the time factor for the queen to reach full maturity and fertility.
Interestingly the bees in the nuc had a daughter from the original hive queen and likewise the queen in the poly was also a daughter from the original queen.
In the next blog, what is going on?