Hi Kirk,
First off huge fan of the website, its lookin great. I am a hobbyist beekeeper in San Diego with about 45 hives. I have set up a deal where i can recive a few times a month a swarm or hive of bees that are similar to a package of bees. Yet these come from removals. Me and my dad feel that the 45 hives we have are about as much as we want to handle, yet its hard for me to turn these bees away.
So my question to you is instead of just trying to start a new hive with these captured bees, who may or may not be queenless. I thought that i could send these bees through a queen shaker and find the queen of the captured hive/swarm (if she is there) then kill her and add the bees to a weak or even strong hive in order to get better honey production as well as s stronger colony. What do u think of this idea?
Also, how should i go about adding the bees and is that ok to do? since they are queenless bees now i thought to place the existing hive on the bottom of the new bees in between them will be newspaper and to have put talc on the bees, and hope that the new bees combine with the old ones! what do u think? cant wait to hear your input!
thanks,
Mike D.
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