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Last Saturday, Marc and I went through my four surviving hives. As we opened the strongest hive, bees began flying from the top medium super and the numbers increased until the flight numbers and behavior looked like a swarm. These bees covered the front of the home hive and one next to it. As we examined the hive, the bees began roaring and got louder as time went on. The bees were runny. Many landed on us, but were not aggressive. We saw some capped brood that was fresh, but no eggs, and did not see the queen. Some bees at the top were fanning with abdomens up. We closed up the hive and I used a bee brush to get the bees off the front of the neighboring hive and as they took to the air, they returned to their own hive. They did not attempt to enter the neighboring hive.

Tuesday afternoon I found a dead queen in front of another of my hives, with four bees still "tending" it. It was not the queen from the hive it was in front of; we saw that marked queen on Saturday and this one was not marked.

This afternoon, I went into the strongest hive to see what was going on. They roared when I opened the hive and were still very runny. There was more capped brood and emerging bees. I saw healthy older larvae but no eggs and no freshly hatched larvae. On one side of a frame were two small peanut sized ?closed queen cells and on the other side of the frame were three definite open supercedure/emergency queen cells with larvae in them. This hive is a deep and two mediums and is crowded with bees. In the last few days they have been bringing in occasional pollen, but not nearly the amount two of my average healthy appearing hives have been gathering.

Murder? Is it likely that the queen from the strong hive took flight Saturday, the flying bees were following her, she got disoriented and went into the wrong hive leading to her death? Hence the body of the queen found Tuesday?

Mystery. If the strong hive was not queenless, why did it behave unlike the others? The fanning, runniness and roaring , and multiple queen cells would point toward queenlessness. Is there another explanation?

Mess up? I took action. One of my hives was terminally weak. I located the queen it this hive. She has laid a small amount of eggs and has only a couple of hundred nurse bees and foragers in total. I opened the strong hive, placed newspaper over the top medium and made a few slits in the paper. I placed the medium super with the queen and nurse bees from the weak hive over the newspaper and then put a hive top feeder on over that medium. To make an upper exit for them I placed one inner cover with front opening in its normal position and another one on top of it positioned so that the front opening was twice as large as the one inner cover opening. I placed the outer top pushed forward so that bees could enter and exit the weak hive super from the top. Have I done a proper combining of two hives to provide a queen to a strong queenless hive or set up a potential death battle?

Thoughts or comments on this mini novel are definitely welcome.

My opinion, and it is only an opinion.

Your queen was either sick or injured. They superceded her. She either left, or was ran off. Either way, she was weak enough that she didn't make it far. Thus the dead queen. The remedy you used was as good as I can possibly imagine, other than, I would remove the inner covers after 24 hours. You might want to do it now, unless you want to wait and see if they will move all the honey out of the weak hive into the lower boxes. They will not use all the boxes as long as the inner lids are keeping the hive split into two apartments.

The only thing separating the upper super of the queenless/strong hive and the super containing the queen and a few hundred bees at most is the sheet of newspaper with a few small slits in it. The inner covers are on top of the queenright super to give those bees some sort of entrance, otherwise they could not leave their super unless and until the newspaper was shreded enough to combine the hives. I guess I did not make that part clear. Should I shut them in?

I misunderstood. I thought they were next to the newspaper. As they are, the newspaper was removed by them within 24 hours, so the upper entrance doesn't matter one way or the other.

I must be a slow reader. It takes me longer than that to get through the newspaper. I really thought it took longer for them to make the breakthrough. Thanks for the input.

Just a quick update. I am somewhat hopeful. It looked like the foragers were bringing significantly more pollen into the combined hive yesterday than they had been bringing in for the past few days. I am hoping this is not just pollen needed to finish feeding the remaining larvae, but signals that the combination was successful and the stronger hive has accepted the queen from the weaker hive.

A further update of a puzzling situation. I went into the combined hive this afternoon. The upper medium super that had the queen and a few hundred attendents now has bees covering 5 frames. There was capped brood and larvae on at least one of the frames. The newspaper between this medium and the one below it appeared to be in tact, with just the small slits I made being the entire opening between supers. I removed the newspaper. I had left the inner covers in place on top of the upper medium and a number of bees were hanging around it or using it as an upper entrance.

The next medium super down is the uppermost medium of the hive that appeared queenless and had the 3 emergency/supercedure cells when I last looked. One cell had been dismantled. One cell was partially dismantled but had part of the rough end still in place like when queen cells are near hatching. The third cell contained the body of a queen that was fully formed except that it did not have wings formed (almost looking like deformed wing virus but not as much wing material). This medium had some eggs in cells. They were well centered and one egg to a cell.

As I got ready to put the hive back together and close it up, I heard a queen piping from further down in the hive. I did not go deeper into the hive and closed it up.

It looks like the two hives combined based on the number of bees in the uppermost medium. Is it likely that the newspaper kept the queen from the uppermost super from dispatching one or more of the virgin queens and I was hearing the beginning of a showdown?

None of the eggs in the second medium (previously queenless) had reached the stage of development of being capped so I do not know if they will be workers or drones, and the eggs are from a virgin queen or from the queen from the uppermost medium who somehow made it through the newspaper to the lower medium.

Thoughts?

Hopefully my post of a few minutes ago went through. I hit "submit" and got a strange error message and the new post does not appear on the Beekeeping 101 general list. If it made it to the board, maybe this posting will bring it to attention for comments.

Thanks.

I am anxious to see what is going on with the combined hive. This Thursday will be the 21st day of my Formic Acid mite treatment of my 3 hives. They have been sealed up to create a fumigation chamber for the treatment so that I cannot go exploring. The other 2 hives are bringing in pollen in a steady flow but the combined hive has appeared lethargic over the last week and almost no pollen is being brought in. I have a feeling that the queen from the failing hive I used in the combination may have failed. As soon as the weather permits Thursday or thereafter, I plan on having a good look.

And now, the rest of the story.
Last weekend Marc and I went through the combined hive and it was an
ugly sight. It was queenless and had dwindled to about 1 frame of very
lethargic bees. When there was a large population of queenless bees,
they pooped up the frames quite a bit, but I am pretty sure this was
not nosema, but was a general breakdown of functioning. There
was some minor wax moth damage in the upper mediums that had
been used for brood and had not been sprayed with a certain wax moth
killer. The deeps that had been sprayed showed a little wax moth activity with rapid death of the larvae.

We shook out the bees from this hive and they immediately went to the
next hive over, landed on the landing board and many began to fan with
scent glands in the air. They were immediately accepted and there was
no fighting at the entrance. Ten minutes after closing out this hive you would not have known one had been there. I guess this is a consequence
of having so few bees leaving the hive to actively forage.

I hope some of you who have posted will go back and look at your earlier posts and give us "the rest of the story." As I look back on most of mine, I realize they end with "and then the hive died," but I learn a lot from my mistakes and misfortunes and learn from other beekeepers' postings.

I will keep plugging with my two (for now) surviving hives and await the arrival of the nucs. After all, tomorrow is another day!