Combo the Combo Hive

Today we combined the remaining bees in the combo hive with the Langstroth colony that was originally split from it earlier this summer.

Several weeks ago, I noticed that the combo hive, which was the strongest of our spring swarms, was building lots of swarm cells. In an effort to stop or decrease the swarming, I split the hive into a Langstroth. (By the way, this never works; once a colony makes swarm cells, it's gonna swarm.) The remaining combo hive 'swarmed itself silly'--a technical term I invented to describe a colony that has swarmed repeatedly until it has too few adult bees to care for the brood.

When we checked the combo hive today, there were just a couple of combs of bees. There was larva and capped brood, so we knew there was a laying queen, or at least that there had been fairly recently. The numbers of bees had dwindled to the point where I couldn't really see the hive surviving; just a few bees went in and out of the hive in a 15-second period.

So, we combined the combo and Langstroth colonies using the newspaper method. Simply put, you consolidate all of the bees from the strong colony into one deep, then you place a newspaper with slits in it over the top bars of said deep, and finally, you place a second deep containing the combs and bees from the weak hive on top. The idea is that the bees on both sides of the newspaper will eat their way through, getting used to each others scent as they go, and be best of friends by the time they come out on the other side.

We'll check on the bees again next weekend and let you know how they're doing.