I felt I had three options with Hive #6 - this photo shows robbing and this has been a continuous problem. This was a strong hive in the spring and produced a large swarm which is doing great. I gave a friend a nuc and the queen must have been in those frames and the hive never recovered. I wasn't as conscientious as I should have been in checking the hive so lots of lessons learned.
So the three options (I checked with my beekeeper friend, Mr. Ellis, and some of these were his suggestions and opinions and from others too):
First I took the super off the hive and put on Nuc #1 with newspaper between.
Option #1 - buy a queen.
Option #2 - put the bees in a nuc and hope they make a queen or buy a queen and put with them.
Option #3 - take the bees out of the hive and put with another hive and give up on this hive.
So after opening the hive Wed, I chose Option #3 - there were so few bees left in the hive, I felt sure they wouldn't make a queen and we've got about a month and a half of nothing for the bees. And I truly did not want to buy a queen.
So on Nuc #1, I put the super and on Nuc #2 I put the brood box with all the bees from Hive #6 with newspaper between.
This is Hive #4 which nothing was changed except this hive was beside Hive #6 and the robbers were still hanging around so I put an entrance reducer on this hive.
They were fine this afternoon and in a couple of days, I'll take the entrance reducer off.
