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  • Merging hives without removing the 2nd queen

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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #4657  by beebench
 29 Aug 2019, 19:12
Hi,

I have a weak nuc I want to merge with one of my strong hives. However, I cannot find the queen in the nuc and i have been looking for her every week for two months. I have found and marked the queens in all my other (3) hives without an issue. I suspect she is smaller than normal and she lays very few eggs (but they are viable eggs). There are about 2.5 frames of brood (only half brood on each frame though).

My question is, can I just merge this weak nuc with a very strong hive anyway?
 #4659  by AdamD
 29 Aug 2019, 19:25
I've never combined two colonies, both with laying queens and would not recommend it myself as you can never be sure of the outcome. What you might be able to do as you are going to unite anyway is - assuming the nuc and full-sized hive are close together - is to remove the nuc a few feet. After a day or two the flyers will have attempted to return home and found the nearest entrance which happens to be the full-sized hive you want them to finish up in anyway. With less bees in your nuc, you have a better chance of finding the small queen. Sometimes a scrub queen can be hardly any bigger than a worker.
 #4660  by NigelP
 29 Aug 2019, 20:11
Murray McGregor one of the UK's biggest bee farmers combines 2 queen right together and reckons the younger queen wins about 80% of the time, which for someone with 1000's of hives is good enough for him. But perhaps not good enough for us hobbyists.

Scrub queens....define?
Only definitions I've seen are the queen cells are emergency and the queen cells appear "smaller" than those drawn from queen cups.
This is only to be expected as they are started at the bottom of the comb from enlarged cells, rather than from queen cups that are already on the outside of the frame. Assuming one is careful in making sure they are drawn from very young larvae with lots of royal jelly...I've not noticed an appreciable difference in queens performance.
Another myth or misconception? Or fact?
 #4663  by AdamD
 30 Aug 2019, 09:43
Nigel, I have a polystyrene mini-nuc with a tiny queen in it now. The queen was generated by the mini-nuc from an emergency queecell after I pulled a mated queen out. So the queencell was obviously not fed well - even if it was started in good time. So yes, I would consider her a scrub queen.

Your implication in your comment that 'scrub' queens are not necessarily inferior is possibly correct - the Miller Method is a recognised method of queen-raising but the eggs are started on worker cells and then dumped into a queenless colony for conversion to queens as emergency cells. So, a rhetorical question; when is an emergency queen a scrub queen?

And according to this - there is little correlation between the size of the queen and the number of ovaries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3398436/

Apologies to the original question - going off topic a bit!
 #4666  by Patrick
 30 Aug 2019, 13:50
The problem with a lot of this is we are not always comparing like with like.

Running a virgin into a queenright hive is not the same as introducing a ripe cell or an already mated queen or a queen from the same stock as the recipient vs a bought in queen or an old failing gentle queen vs a young queen but aggressive colony. It’s a bit apples and pears.

I am a bit of a fan of the queen right forced supercedure and I have heard commercials in NZ do it routinely but my (albeit very limited experience) of bunging in a mated queen into a queenright hive failed. Sure it was operator error somewhere.
 #4669  by NigelP
 30 Aug 2019, 16:58
AdamD wrote:
30 Aug 2019, 09:43
So, a rhetorical question; when is an emergency queen a scrub queen?

And according to this - there is little correlation between the size of the queen and the number of ovaries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3398436/

Apologies to the original question - going off topic a bit!
I think emergency queens are considered scrub queens by many beekeepers because the cell they develop in looks smaller than a queen cell started in a queen cup...although they aren't smaller as part of the cell is back to the rib of the foundation and invisible. So I wouldn't necessarily consider these to be scrub queens....assuming they were generated in a colony with a large population of young bees able to provide copious jelly.
Sticking a frame of eggs in a mature queenless colony where the workers have to reinvent their pharyngeal glands back to a juvenile glands....then they may not produce enough RJ soon enough.
But a difficult question to answer without looking at individual circumstances.

Size can be due to genetics or the size of cell.....number of ovaries is mainly due to nutrition, Some references in one of Winston's books. So they are right you can have small queens with lots of ovaries....or egg laying machines as we call them.
 #4670  by MickBBKA
 31 Aug 2019, 02:41
I find size is a very poor way of judging a queen. In my local area we have very small black queens. I do often find that what look like my smallest weakest queens going into their 1st winter often turn out to be my most prolific queens the following year. Brood & 1/2 + 5 supers from an over wintered colony by the middle of July that was 6 seams of bees at the beginning of May is not unusual to me now. I find colony management is more important than strain of bee. I see some of my queens as virgins or newly mated and wonder what the hell I am going to do with them they are so small. Having just come home from holiday I inspected a colony that looked queen less 2 weeks ago, it now has 8 frames of brood.

Don't judge the queen by her size, judge her by her work rate !

Cheers, Mick.
 #4672  by Chrisbarlow
 31 Aug 2019, 12:32
I had a colony a few years ago and all season I could not find her either. I ended stripping the box down and I eventually found her under one of the bottom rims of the brood box. I believe some queens have a trait of running for cover and hiding when the box is opened.
 #4675  by Patrick
 31 Aug 2019, 15:02
Yes, I am sure that is an inheritable trait. I also agree with Mick - judge by performance. I have never seen a direct correlation positive or negative with queen size. But I am a hobbyist.

It’s convenient (ie easy to spot) and fun to have tanker queens but there are other much more important criteria.