Hi All,
Can you merge two 1 box hives by placing newspaper and queen excluder between them?
(Maybe spray the newspaper with some sugar water).
My first aim is to remove one of the queens (They are both feral).
My second aim is to know which box the queen is in by which has the brood in about 20 days time.
It is Spring time with light flow.
Cheers
Damien
Yes. I do this sometimes. I pay no attention as to which is the weak or which is the strong of the two boxes as to which is on too or the bottom. I do use a coloured tack to mark which of the boxes has the queen in it.
As a reference. This is what I do.
Find the queens first and decide which one you want to keep. Remove the other. Put her in a cage and keep as contingency or kill her, whatever.
Pick which location is where the combined hive is going to be and which is going to be the bottom box. This is typically the stronger one but not always and not necessary to be so. Put a tack or marker of some kind on the box that has the queen in it.
Open up. Expose the bottom box. Clean off the top bars of the frames, scrape clean and flat best you can. Put newspaper on. Fold the four corners of the paper in so there is a small triangular passage in the 4 corners just big enough for 2 bees to pass. Make only 2 or 3 slits in the paper elsewhere near the middle 3 frames. Put the queen excluder on top of the paper. Tip up the second box, clean the bottom bars of the frames. Scrape clean and flat best you can. Place the box on top of the excluder. Put the lid on. Leave them alone for 1 week.
Come back in one week. Separate the boxes. Go into the box that does not have the queen marker. Search it and destroy queen cells. The newspaper and the queen excluder block bees and queen pheromones. If there were any eggs or brood in the queenless box it will now have queen cells, guaranteed. Destroy the QCs. Go into the box that has the queen marker, locate the queen or evidence of her by eggs, just for your assurance that all is well.
Put the box with the queen on the bottom, reversing the boxes if necessary. Put the queen excluder if you still want it in place. Place upper box and close up. Done