Combining hives

After checking the hive that swarmed, I realized that there really aren't enough bees to get through winter--barely one hive body. The best decision seemed to be to combine the now weakened hive with the stronger one.

What irony! That hive was so strong, starting from a nuc in late June and going on to produce nearly two full mediums of honey. Remember, I even thought of raising a queen from them because they were doing so well! And now, a late September swarm has reduced them to a pitiful ten frames of bees. And the hive I worried about so much, that arrived with a supersedure queen, a whole lot of dead bees and built up so slowly--well, they didn't produce a bit of extra honey, but they're a big happy, productive hive now with stores a-plenty for winter.

So I combined the two hives, with the hope that come spring, I'll have a big, bustling colony that can be split before it swarms.

I've removed the two mediums of comb honey. I'm trying to decide if I should just do the crush-and-strain method of removing honey, or leave it in the comb. I've been using some of it from the comb on toast, and I have to admit, it really is good.

I also wonder if I should keep a bit, one way or another, in case the girls need stores over the winter. I also intend to feed, though. While the colony seems to have lots of stores (and why shouldn't they, with the great goldenrod/aster flow we had?), still, our winters have been so incredibly cold the last two years, I want to make sure they have enough. I'll feed sugar syrup until they won't take anymore to help them for the winter.

It has been a heck of a first season, I have to say.

I intend to expand next year--I already have the equipment for five hives, so I'll buy three packages, minimum, for next spring. I'd also like to raise some queens next year, and I'm exploring various ways of doing that. I can use the natural method: put a bunch of bees in a nuc with eggs, and let them raise their own, or I use one of the kits available to raise multiple queens at once, and then put them in mating nucs.

Clearly, for either I'll need more than the two nucs I have now as finishing/mating nucs.

I'm trying to be as organic as possible, by the way. I'm using essential oils in their syrup to combat mites, and I'll use menthol on trachial mites, but otherwise, I'm working on converting the girls to small cell to control pests.

I was astounded when I read that most beekeepers use antibiotics twice a year and various chemicals against mites. The antibiotics really surprised me: we all know by now that prophylactic use of them creates resistant strains--and that is exactly what has happened. As for mites, misuse of chemicals has started to create resistant mites, too.

Even thought neither is used (in theory) during a flow, still, I find it hard to believe that all these chemicals don't make it into the wax and the honey.

This may well mean I'll lose a colony, or both, until I get the bees onto small cell (and even that won't prevent some colony loss). But I think the trade-off is worth it. I'm not a commercial beekeeper--I can afford to make mistakes, after all.