Responding to Allen's Comment (below) Guess by that definition I'm still a beginner. We once added a second story and a second queen to 50 nucs, and lost almost all of the original queens - not the new queens!. If I add a colony with queen to a weak colony with queen, I routinely use newspaper. I have rotated strong/weak colonies on a pallet - sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Usually see at least an occasional lost queen. In our research, we don't want to lose a queen - so I tend to be conservative. Large beekeepers often weigh the risk of queen loss against costs of additional time and fuss. We've seen some big behavioral differences amongst hives. Some aggressively repel any bees not from their colony, others don't seem to care. But, I still don't know how to know if the bees will get along. We did not use the newspaper, since that is usually a beginner practice, mostly for people who don't know if the bees will get along or not. Jerry - 40 years and still a beginner. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm