The End of the Newspaper Combine Story

A cou;le of weeks ago when I discovered that I had three queenless hives, I made several decisions. I decided to requeen the only strong-looking hive of the three. The second hive, Melissa, which had wax moths already laying and wax moth worms already eating, I combined with Persephone on my deck.

All of the beekeepers online say that with a newspaper combine, you cut slits in the newspaper between the two hive boxes and after a while the bees chew through the paper, leaving scraps of paper around the hive. Although my first attempt at combining Hyron and Hyron2 did not make a successful hive, this one appears to have worked.

There are newspaper scraps all over the ground near the front door.



When I took the top off of the top hive box there were tons of happy bees.



When I separated the two boxes, lo and behold, all of the newspaper had been chewed away and all that was left were the scraps between the wood edges of the hive boxes.

Hooray - success at the combine at last. I didn't go deep into the hive to see about eggs, etc, because the day was cloudy and threatening. My main goal was to remove any remaining newspaper and bid the bees well.