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Combining hives

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Lechwe:
OK, I have read about folks combining hives to get one strong one.  When you do this do you killl one of the queens or let the hive decide which one it porefers? What if you have a strong queen and want to keep her can you kill the other and have them combine well? I assume using the newspaper methods is the prefered way of doing it. When done this way is there an entrance in the top or just the opening in the inner cover?

Assuming I can do this does it make sense to take a swarm that was caught and kill the queen and combine the swarm with the established hive to strengthen it and hopefully get to take some honey this year?

Thanks for the input.

Robo:
Don't just put the two hives together and let the queens battle.  You might end up with just one queen that is injured.  Decide which queen you want to keep, and kill the other one.

The newspaper method works well, you can put a couple razor blade slits in the paper if you want.  Don't give them an upper entrance, just provide some ventilation.

The best thing to use swarms for is drawing foundation.  The bees gourge themselves prior to swarming in anticipation of having to build comb in their new home.  So if you have foundation to draw, put the swarm into a nuc or deep with just foundation and let them do there thing.  You can always combine them after their comb drawing instinct has wained.

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