Combining Two Honey Bee Hives Into One

It's that time of year again: Time to consolidate weak hives for winter survival.

The beekeeper is constantly checking on their hives looking for any little sign of distress or problems, but sometimes a hive will become queenless or has a weak queen that hasn't quite produced a strong colony capable of surviving the winter. There are just many possible causes and scenarios responsible for this as there are solutions, and given time there are proven solutions to save a hive and build it up, but at this time of year we're more concerned with winter survival than overall colony count.

So what do we do about it? We combine the weak hive with another one to make one strong colony. There are several ways to do this, but our favorite that has worked for us time and again is The Newspaper Method. No special tools or techniques are required and it works.

Tune in and watch the entire process from decision making to the final check. We'll show you how!