Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Beekeeping 101 => Topic started by: vossejongk on May 26, 2016, 04:41:22 pm
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Ad title says, with the newspaper method?
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I don't see why not, but I guess I would ask why? 2 queens are better than one, with bees in comb building overdrive!
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The queens in those swarms will have to battle it out, the loser being dragged out the front door. If they are small swarms I might consider that, but this time of year I would put them in nucs and see how they do.
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First I would ascertain whether they are prime swarms with the old mated queen or cast swarms that have a unmated virgin. Cast swarms join together in the wild if there are enough of them swarming at the same time.Due to the virgins not being mated and laying they give off week pheromones so the bees in the hive do not pay much attention to them and let the virgin queens fight it out for themselves. They use piping sounds to draw out other virgins.
A swarm with an older mated queen, Her workers will be far more loyal to her and her pheromones and will attack the other queen. Dumping 2 old swarm queens together you could end up with a battle royal and the hive end up queenless. It wont be just the queens involved in fighting it out.
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Thanks guys, reason was they were fairly small swarms yeah. Thing is all I know about the queen is that she's there in both swarms, they didn't came from my hives AFAIK. If I merge them they'll become a big hive and I can get honey from them this year :)
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If they are both now laying, remove one of the queens and do a news paper combine.