# Combine Queenless with strong colony.



## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

If you do a newspaper unite of the 2 hives it should work; however there is the possibility that a bee or bees from the queenless hive would kill the queen. Do the bees act queenless,IOW are they fanning their wings and crying? Perhaps there is a virgin or infertile queen with them. Also, how many bees remain is a factor. The safest thing would be to first give them a frame with new eggs or young larvae to see what they do with it. Again, this isn't worth the effort if there are not a few thousand bees there. Wore case scenario would be to shake the bees out of the failing hive somewhere nearby and give the combs sans bees to the healthy hive.


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## G3farms (Jun 13, 2009)

You are pretty far north of me and not sure what kind of weather you have there, but you could still be queen right and she is just starting to shut down for the winter. Different races of bees act differently when it comes to winter time and spring time.

Good advice to toss in a frame of eggs to see what they do with it, if queen cells appear then you more than likely are queenless and should combine.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Once established they are truly queen-less - just shake them out in front of some hive, distribute frames as you see fit, move their original hive so that there nothing to return to.
Best done in the evening.
Best to have some "ramp" for the shook bees to climb into the receiving hive.
Just done one last night - here is a combine for you.


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## Newbeek2021 (May 13, 2021)

Unrelated but whats the metal hook for & any significance to the blue circles or just a pokadot hive?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Newbeek2021 said:


> Unrelated but whats the metal hook for & any significance to the blue circles or just a pokadot hive?


Polka-dots are my way to be "artistic" and less boring, when I have time for it.

The metal brackets are 2" plumbing pipe brackets that I screw onto all my larger, uni-body hives - for transporting and other utility purposes.
Kinda like so, for example:


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