I probably made a huge mistake?!

[Michelle]

So I did a combine today. I went thru the week swarm looking for the queen, you would think that it would be easy to spot her since there were only 3 frames. I just couldn't find her at all. So I cleaned up some of the messed up comb and did the newspaper combine. Did I just doom both of the queens? I hope this goes ok.

[Riverrat]

Time will be the judge on that one.  But most generally you will fair ok as long as the queen from good hive wins and does not get injured

[tbonekel]

Yes, I think you did fine. If you didn't see any eggs or brood in the swarm hive, then you are probably right about it being queenless.

[Lburou]

Michelle, it is better to take your losses in the fall than to put the effort into overwintering a weak hive only to have it fail sometime during the winter or spring and surrender the equipment to moths and mice.  Fall is just around the corner.  I lost two weak mating NUCs over last winter that I should have combined last fall.

My focus now is to get colonies ready for the winter -plenty of food reserves, low mite counts and healthy, young bees entering the fall.

The best hive I ever had resulted when I combined a queenless hive with another, which went on to make 11 gallons of honey the next year.  :-)

[Jen]

I think you'll be okay Michelle. It feels so uncertain when you make the call yourself. But I've found that even when I've made what I think is a mistake... turns out just fine if you give them a few weeks.

I to am making more calls and judgements on my own. It's a good feeling 

[apisbees]

Even after 30+ years I will make a decision some time in hast and latter think of a better way I could have dealt with it. But the bees are forgiving and will fix whatever I screw up.

[Michelle]

Thanks for your words of wisdom! We shall see how this turns out!