The next day I was able to transfer the bees to a new deep above my doomed colony, combining the colonies – the Garage Bees would have a new Queen!
Newspaper Technique for Combining Colonies
I used the “newspaper separation” technique, so that the hives wouldn’t mix right away. The newspaper mostly prevents that by allowing them to slowly mix as the bees chew through it.
Apparently there’s a high risk of battles between bees when they mix. The worst case scenario is that workers who have been queenless, and laying their own drones, decide to sting the new queen on the scene! Bee drama!
Look for the new, Dark Queen of the bees!
All week I happily sat out eating my oatmeal breakfast watching the Royal Bee Air Force gathering pollen and nectar, maybe 10 ft from the hive.
I was expecting the hives to look like they were working together, but it didn’t seem like there was any chewed up newspaper showing up outside the hive.
The new bees seemed to be finding gaps to come out past the top cover, rather than assimilate down through the bottom deep… this is probably good since we want the combining of the colonies to happen slowly (over a week or two).