# Recombine



## Blueflint (Apr 19, 2016)

On April 12, when doing my inspections, I found quite a few swarm cells in one hive. This hive really had built up in population too. I pulled 4 frames of brood/food/nurse bees along with the old queen and put them in a NUC. I also pulled a frame with 3 capped swarm cells along with 3 more frames of brood and bees and put them in a NUC. The original hive had a ton of swarm cells, I left three capped cells that were next to each other and cut out all the rest. 

I checked the NUCS last week, the old queen is doin well in the NUC as is her hatched daughter that is in the NUC next to her. Today I was finally able to get into the main hive. Well, to my surprise there was no eggs, no brood and no queen. I guess the hatched queen did not make it back from her mating flight. I suspected there was a problem as the hive was pretty agitated. So on the fly I decided to recombine the 2016 queen and the original hive. I reassembled the hive, put two sheets of newspaper with knife slits in it across the top box then put another box on top, transferred the queen and all of her frames and nurse bees from the NUC, put the lid back on and now have my fingers crossed.

I was relieved I saw no evidence of a laying worker. I was working on the fly. Was recombining my best choice? I am in my second year and this was the fasted "fix" I could think of.

Thanks, Tony


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## bison (Apr 27, 2011)

Yep you done good! Your alternative (just as fast) would have been to take a frame of eggs/young brood from the nuc with the old queen and put it into the original hive so they could make a new queen. This probably would work... but would take a month before you know if it works. What you did will give you a strong hive quickly plus the second nuc that will start growing soon.


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## Blueflint (Apr 19, 2016)

This morning I went up to check the hive. I saw a little paper "fluff" at the entrance. I pulled the tray from the screened bottom board and it was full of fluff. I can say they went thru the paper over night with certainty. I hope things went well but I will wait until next weekend before I open the hive up again to see what they are doing.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Good choice. 

Make sure they have plenty of empty space now for the queen to keep laying eggs, and supers for nectar storage. We're not quite out of the woods yet with swarming. The main flow is on and if they are crowded and start backfilling the empty brood cells you could be right back where you started fairly quickly.


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## Blueflint (Apr 19, 2016)

Yes, they had back filled the upper 10 frame deep, mostly capped honey! The lower box was not quite as filled with room as this box had newer frames from the earlier split. So, I left the bottom box on, put down newspaper, put the next deep on with her NUC frames plus additional frames to fill the box, added a queen excluder and newspaper above, added the nearly full deep on top of that (still had a ton of bees from the hive), added additional super above. My plan was to give her space to continue laying, the bees have room to move nectar around and they should finish filling and cappings g the 80% full deep above her. It should be ready to extract pretty quick. I was working on the fly yesterday, trying to make good decisions. Sure hope it works out!


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