# Need advice for a recent combine.



## brewbush (Dec 11, 2015)

So my best hive this year (out of 4 which overwintered) was a carniolan. Mid april I had to artificially swarm the queen because of charged swarm cells. I added a purchased queen a day later to the original hive, but checking 7 days later, the queen was released, not found, and there were multiple queen cells that were capped. 

I therefore thought they didn't like the purchased queen and allowed them to requeen themselves. Fast-forward to today, 1 month after the capped QCs. This hive currently has 2 deeps and 3 medium supers. 
I inspect and see some cells on an open frame partially drawn out with multiple eggs in each cell, however many empty cells with no eggs or larvae. No queen found.

In the past I have given hives more time.....and ended up getting a LW colony. This was 4 weeks after capped QC, I think I would expect something. So what I did is I had a 4 frame nuc from a split that successfully requeened themselves and were doing fine. I took this hive, placed into a deep box, and did a newspaper combine with the larger hive. Here is how I put them in....in order from bottom to top....

2 original deeps....1 super....newspaper....new deep with new queen....newspaper....2 other honey supers.


A couple of personal observations
1. I could have put the new queen in a deep and put that on the bottom, then the rest of the hive on top. In hindsight writing this now, I maybe should have done that......hmmm. Think it would still be ok?

2. If I missed the queen in the large hive, they may end up killing the new queen. I accepted this risk in order to hopefully prevent a LW situation.

3. This was my main honey producer hive for the season, bummer. So I am hoping this rectifies the issue and I can still take advantage of the remainder of the flow.

4. Next time, during flow, I do not think I am going to allow a production hive to requeen itself. In order to prevent this issue next season. I figured they would continue to gather and store honey in the supers. Many are started to get filled out, so it may be a good choice...however.....


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