Ok Folks... Put your heads together...
Why do I have common house flies and the ones you see on dead fleash all over my hive and around it. Also I've seen what my neighbor calls flies which look like small yellowjackets trying to get into the entrance. The girls are fighting them off like crazy.
I can't speak for your area, but the DEC released black flies in our area because they eat the eggs of some other insect pest. So I have plenty of flies now :roll: The worst part is when I'm working on the bees and these flies keep landing on my bare arms, I keep thinking it's bees.
Caught a small swarm the other day, coolest thing happened, they left the new hive 15 hours later, early the new morning. SOOO cool to watch. They landed on my peach tree and I put them in a brand new deep with only 5 frames. They appear to be queenless so I'm trying to buy one.
You can keep a swarm from leaving by placing a queen excluder between the bottom board and the deep. This of course assumes there is a queen. Only leave it for a day or two just in case it is a virgin queen.
I have a rather healthy hive that could use the extra workers...would you risk combineing them? How would you suggest I blend them, the newspaper and queen extractor between the deeps?
These are my only hives. 1 deep with 5 frames. 1 Colony in 2 deeps that are not even filled in, maybe a total on 8 frames with both honey and brood. The rest in cutout comb fully drawn and ready for them to fill up.
Hope this is clear enough.
Mark
I'd give them another week, to see if there is a virgin, and then look for eggs. If not, then you can decide to give them a queen or combine. If there is a virgin queen, and you try to give them a queen, they will kill your purchased queen. So make sure they are queenless before giving them a queen.
You can combine with newspaper or you can just dump the bees in front of your other hive and let them find their way in. Since having a minimum of 2 hives is highly recommended you might really want to try and keep them separate.
rob....