I found what look like supercedure cells uncapped at the edge of the brood with more drone cells around it than i was expecting. There is plenty of space in the hive and up to this point my overwintered native black queen has been performing brilliantly. There are all stages of brood still present. I accept she may be running out of juice.
If on next inspection it still looks like the girls have supercedure on their minds I can merge them with a nuc I was saving for the end of the season.
My problem is,if I merge the two hives now I have 4 supers on the old queen hive and putting another 14x12 on top of that is quite a stack.
Should I do it that way or put news paper above and below the new queen brood box with the old bee supers on top.
This is a very inconvenient time of year to have everything piled high…
Why interfere with a supersedure?
You have the best of both worlds there, an old queen laying along with her daughter till the bees decide to remove her. No break in brood or production; an ideal situation. I wish all my bees would do this.
If you must combine colonies with too many supers the trick is to combine the supers over newspaper with another colony and the brilliant thing is that you can do this in the daytime while your bees are flying. Then you can prepare your two hives that you are merging. When the merge is complete just take the supers back, again over newspaper.
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Take your newspaper and open it to the comics section: Read through them every day. Do this for two weeks and then check your hive and report back 
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