Hi Jack,
I might have spoken too soon.
I did my combine about 6 days ago.
Just a few minutes ago I found this on a board under the front entrance of the hive.
It looks like a queen to me but what do others think? It has only just been removed from the hive as it is still twitching. I seems undamaged but very pale. About 17.5mm long (.7 inch).
Iâm assuming you both mean in a case where the top colony has no entrance?
Looks like a queen to me- perhaps there is another victorious one in the hive?
If it was a queen, I would venture that she is a virgin, given the short length of her abdomen. I donât think you lost much with her expulsion. 
Indeed yes.
If you are combining wo small colonies and one is really tiny a good way is to put one on a frame into a paper bag and hang that in the other brood box
OR
What I would have done if they are really small is sprayed both with a quick puff of air freshener or peppermint oil in a light sugar syrup then just put them in the same box. If you have another colony adding a frame of bees from them confuses everybody and itâs like making a nucâŚno fighting. You could cage the queen if you are concerned for her safety
Hi Jack, I was talking about a general rule in relation to ventilation.
If both colonies are tiny, what you could do for future reference is simply combine them into a different box, lid & bottom board. During good weather they wont fight, as long as you stick to using a different box etc.
I still view a weak colony as an opportunity. An opportunity to quickly grow another good sized colony. Especially if that weak colony has a queen.
One thing that I do a bit of, is to stick two sheets of newspaper under a 4 frame nuc box with masking tape. Then take it to my other bee site, put four frames of bees into it, secure a vented lid to it, bring it home, then place it above the weak colony. Then I place a board over the remaining gap.
Those four frames can be all out of one colony, or two from two colonies staggered, or one from four different colonies. I like the last option because each of those 4 colonies will hardly miss one frame of bees. These are all out of the honey supers, the top boxes, so itâs easy to do.
@Semaphore
Hi Jack - I am hoping that there is another one there. A couple of days ago (after the merge) I inspected and found eggs, so someone was laying.
Hi Dawn, I was surprised that they took 6 days to kill her. I wonder if that is usual? I thought it would happen within hours of them getting through the paper. Agreed it is not the most impressive looking queen. The other possibility of course is that I somehow injured it when doing the last inspection and now I have no queen at all.
Ok - getting even more odd. I just found another queen expelled from the combined hive along with about 50 worker bees - all overnight. Anyone any clues? Photo shows second queen next to one of the workers.
Hive combine not going as expected now.
I have a hypothesis. If she was an unmated virgin queen, they are often tolerated by the hive for many days, even when a fertile queen is in the hive. That is how supercedures happen. Once the queen gets well-mated and the ovarioles start to develop, the pheromones probably change, and the hive now has to pick a single (mated) queen.
With your queen, it is conceivable that she was unmated, and once they broke through the newspaper, she flew off and then got back after a good mating flight, stirring up an execution squad. There can be only one (fertile queen). 
Hi Dan, the dead bees are most likely a result of housekeeping. There would have been some dead bees sitting on top of the unchewed newspaper. Possibly not even from fighting, just natural deaths. Remember that 1% of a colony dies every day. So if the colony canât readily remove the bodies, theyâll pile up until such times as they can.
Ok thanks.
Must have been 3 queens in the hive living nearly a week together.
Even more might be expelled I suppose. The clean out probably coincidental.
Dan, while adding a frame of brood to a nuc the other day, I briefly looked at the frame that I shifted to make room, I noticed the queen cell that the dominant queen emerged from, plus other queen cells with holes in the sides with no queens in them. However, one of the queen cells still had the dead queen in it that hadnât been removed yet.
Absolutely a ruthless society, however the most dominant queen will be the new queen. Hopefully sheâll successfully mate.
It doesnât always end successfully, I have a couple of nucs that Iâm getting a bit impatient with. I might have to intervene in the next week or so. They both have young queens. I might have to squash them & give the colonies some fresh brood or even fresh brood containing queen cells.
it is ruthless indeed⌠I always wondered why bees didnât evolve to have a two queen society. It seems so risky to just have the one. The idea that they fight to the death- youâd think youâd often get a situation where both queens are damaged? But I guess after 65 million years- it seems to be working out pretty well. Thatâs what I call a âsustainableâ society.
Another unrelated but odd thing that just occurred to me the other other day- Drones have no fathers- only the mothers genetics⌠so when a queen mates with a drone- all the genetics she takes from the drone- essentially came from a female bee? So males essentially ultimately contribute nothing in the way of genetics they only carry the genes?
Thatâs all true Jack. Have you come across the Fibonacci sequence of numbers? Those numbers make up the golden spiral, the golden rectangle etc. etc. Itâs interesting to note that the family tree of a drone follows those numbers exactly.
I put one very small slit in the paper. Like an inch long. I also smoke both sides a bit to cover the scent.
@Semaphore
Hi Jack. Thatâs one of my favorite bee facts to share with students:
drones have no father, but do have a grandfather on their motherâs side 
I had read about that Jeff- but I didnât know that Fibonacci himself knew that drones have no father:
âWhen Fibonacci was asked why he studied these numbers and their ratio he replied: "Someday these numbers will unlock the secret of nature and will explain why a drone does not have a fatherâ
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/fibonacci.html
I canât believe Fibonacci knew drones have no fathers around 800 years ago?? Who on Earth figures that out first and how?
EDIT: Is Dave Cushman having a laugh? Is that quote genuine?
This site shows how a the bee society family tree is âfibonaccifiedâ:
https://wild.maths.org/fibonacci-and-bees
And the ratio of drones to workers follows the golden ratio.
Back to topic- I looked in to the merged hive and after 3 days the bees hadnât chewed through the single layer of newspaper⌠so I poked a few bee sized holes in it and will merge them completely tomorrow (no-one mentioned the poking of holes before I had done the mergeâŚ)
Iâm hoping the upstairs bees who are queenless and just have a little comb with honey and pollen only- will move downstairs where the bees have a frame of eggs to look after by tomorrow. Iâm guessing they will have
I love this forum for this very reason!
Thanks @Semaphore and @JeffH for the Fibonacci facts and links.
You are welcome Tracey.
@Semaphore Jack, they MUST be small colonies. As soon as they are united, give them more brood. Give them some about every 10 days. Thatâs what I would do. There are so many options. There is no need whatsoever for a tiny colony to remain as a struggling tiny colony while we have stronger colonies at our disposal.
I didnât call that swarm- âThe Smallest Swarm in the Worldâ for nothing Jeff ;-)- it literally would have fit in a teacup⌠and it was combined with the hopeless âbrick swarmâ found laying on a lawn- on a brick- after 5 days⌠I know I could build them up faster- but I am not concerned if they build up very slowly- in fact it suits me as I have more then enough large colonies to deal with at the moment- I only ever collected those two swarms out of pity. Also itâs a bit of an experiment. Finally- all my other hives are supered and in the midst of a flow and I am happy to leave them- and their precious brood- alone for the time being.
