Here we go, 'round again...
I worked through some hives today and the two hives I had marked from previous cursory glances under the lids as being problematic proved to be... problematic.
So, I took the box of bees with the drone layer and plopped it onto a weaker hive which has a queen and brood and the queenless one with a box and half of bees onto a hive with several frames of bees and a queen and a 4" circle of brood on two sides of one frame.
The bees were flying and there is nothing in the way of forage. A few bees were in some boxes of honey I left open as an indicator.
These are not ideal combining conditions. Did I use newspaper? Nope... just a little smoke while I was checking them. Did I look for queens? Nope. Did I see any fighting? Nope.
Will there be happy, laying queens when I next look? Dunno. I think so. We'll see.
To be continued.
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