I released the queen I had left in a roller cage overnight. The two colonies seemed to combine without fighting. In theory, a queenless colony should look on an introduced queen as a gift from above but you never know with bees. I removed the roller cage and then a frame from the nuc. I placed the frame on its side and set the roller cage onto it, releasing the plug. You can see the queen leaving and the bees immediately starting to groom her. Sometimes ...
Updated 21-03-2010 at 08:26 PM by Jon
Yesterday I checked the final two nucs and found that one was down to two frames of bees but no queen whereas the other had just a handful of bees and a queen. The one with the queen is a colony I overwintered in the garden shed which had barely 2 frames of bees in November. It's surprising it survived at all given the lack of bees for heat generation in the winter we have just had. I decided to combine them rather than loose the bees from the queenless nuc. I brought the queenright ...
Updated 20-03-2010 at 09:04 PM by Jon