# Merging....



## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

If the queen cells were chewed out on the side, you have either a virgin or a mated queen in the hive. Sometimes the bees will tear down queen cells after building them for unknown reasons but I'd bet there a queen in your hive. 
I'd go through the boxes looking for a virgin (use only minimal smoke), she'll probably be running across the comb. Her thorax will be hairless, her abdomen will not be as large as a mated queen but will be longer than her wings. The main issue I would worry about concerning combining with another hive would be if there is a virgin in the "queenless" hive, she will probably kill the mated queen and then you have two hives in trouble.
Mated queens are still available (see some of the recent threads about queen less hives) and you could have a mated queen probably within a week. You could try shaking the bees through an empty deep with a queen excluder attached to the bottom, back into their hive. People have done that when they absolutely had to find the queen.
Good luck.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

You could call Betterbee and see if they have any mated queens still for sale.

Enj.


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