This time of the year is very critical for all bee colonies. One of the precautions we take is to combine smaller colonies to form larger ones. We first identify the colonies based on population. If you don’t choose a Queen the bees will kill one of the Queens themselves, so to mitigate loss we cage a Queen and relocate her. Then take a piece of newspaper and place it on top of the stronger colony. Once the newspaper is set we take a empty bee box and place it on top of the newspaper. The frames from our weaker colony are placed directly on top of the stronger colonies brood chamber and we give the colonies about three days to merge. #beekeeping #gardening #savethebees