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Author Topic: Regueen and nuc combine?  (Read 2009 times)

Offline homer

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Regueen and nuc combine?
« on: May 17, 2009, 11:41:37 am »
Long story short, I have a hive that has now gone through supercedure 4 times in 1 year.  Another hive that just tried to swarm.  Split that up to simulate an artificial swarm, and also took a frame with a swarm cell on it and placed it with a frame of bees into a 5 frame nuc. 

I checked yesterday and found the queen had hatched, though am 99% sure she is still a virgin as she could have only hatched for a day or 2.  Once she starts laying should I cage her and put her in the "supercedure" hive after making it queenless for a day, or should I just move the nuc frames to a deep and do a newspaper combine with the old hive once it's been queenless for a day?  Is there any reason the keep the nuc around when I don't have any more swarm cells to put in it?

I'd love to try some queen rearing but don't think that I'm capable of doing that yet.  I could just let them make a new queen with her eggs, but as per Robo's advice I don't think that I have enough money for supercedure queens, I'm sure that I can't afford them  :-D 

Offline Barry

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Re: Regueen and nuc combine?
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2009, 01:09:17 pm »
Hi,
              My personal preference would to combine the 2 colonies, making them queenright, as you described with newspaper. keeping intact a solid worker force, add supers as they combine to prevent crowding, after making sure the queen is establishing good brood patterns.  Again just my preferences.
Barry