Out of the 10 nucs I purchased this spring, two never thrived. Neither one ever spanded past their original four nuc frames and even though I have been feeding them constantly since hiving them in April, they've never stored a gosh-darned thing!
The first hive I took care of several weeks ago. I went ahead and squished the queen and combined the bees and brood with a stronger hive. But I still have this other one I need to deal with. There is no way they are going to survive the winter like this.
I hate to squish another queen and had an idea, but need a bit of input on whether it's really too late, or since the other option is squishing, give it a try.
My idea is find the queen (which won't be hard), pull the other three original nuc frames and replace with built out comb and try to force the bees to work something new? Don't know why I didn't think about this before, but do you think it might work? Or should I just squish and combine?
Or, does anyone have another idea?