3.0 PRACTICE OF BEEKEEPING
The candidate will be:
3.13 able to describe one method of uniting colonies;
NOTES
Colonies will fight if put directly together. Bees detect which colony they belong to by smell and chemical signals (pheromones).
One of the colonies must be queenless for uniting to be successful.
One method is to place the brood boxes of the two colonies on top of each other separated by a sheet of newspaper. This temporary barrier allows the scents to mingle before the bees come into direct contact with each other. The bees will chew through the paper – it helps to make some small holes to get them started – and intermingle happily.
Another, more disruptive method of reuniting is to mask the colonies scents with a strong odour (eg air freshener), or distract them by covering them with some substance that they will have to clean off (eg flour, talc, sugar solution), or both of these things together. The smelly, agitated bees can be dumped into the second colony and the general disruption will allow them to be accepted.