Uniting Bee Colonies

For beekeepers, this is the time of year when it is time to check that the colonies in our care are fit and well and ready to overwinter. Small or late swarms will need extra provisions by way of excess honey from another colony, honey from your own collected stock (NOT shop bought honey) or if no alternative, sugar solution.

Colonies without a queen will not survive the winter, so will need uniting with a queenright hive. I had been wondering how to do this, as in have had two swarms which started off with a laying queen, then she suddenly seemed to vanish with no attempt by the other bees to rear a new queen. I don't know what is going on but I was wanting to unite them as they have built up a good supply of stores and they will be robbed by wasps and other bees if they start to dwindle. In a National hive, uniting colonies is a simple procedure as one can place newspaper between two boxes and place one on top of the other.

I have WBCs and it is less straightforward to do this as the hives have an inner and an outer casing. Thankfully I read this timely and excellent post about queenless colonies here on the Simple Bees website and have used their method to combine my two WBCs. I placed the weaker colony next to the strong one during the evening when all the bees were inside and put some peasticks over the entrance so that the bees would re-orientate themselves to the new position of the hive. After a couple of days, I then moved the hive back and the bees without a queen have been accepted in to the stronger colony. There are no dead bees, no fighting. There is some honey left in the frames which I will move over when I do the final check before winter.

The bees are much quieter now that the days are
starting to shorten and the weather is cooler