Something very odd has happened when I combined 2 colonies…. I covered them in icing sugar an dropped them all in the brood box together… just like the books say. And I left them to get on with it… And I sneaked a peak last night… and they have separated themselves into two distinct groups at either end of the hive.
Err… that’s not supposed to happen.
I have a national brood box with 11 frames, and some bees are living on about 3 combs at one end, and some are living on 3 combs at the other end, and none on the frames in the middle. And the hive is set up the warm way, so the ones at the back must be going past the ones at the front to get in and out to forage.
Umm… ummm…
- do I have to do anything?
- are they going to fight at some point?
- does that mean they both have queens?
- if they were dusted, how did they know which queen was theirs?
- will they sort it out when then expand closer to each other?