The White Hive's Queen has died.

It wasn't because of the cold weather moving in for winter time, nor did the bees balled her, and it wasn't from mites or disease.

How do I know for sure? Because I squished her with my hive tool...on purpose.

The queen I introduced a while back to stop laying workers, given to me by another club member, was laying eggs, but none of them were growing into circle larva. I even marked frames I witnessed new eggs being laid into, and a month later still no circle larva, just dried out eggs in cells.

Something was wrong with this queen, and the bees didn't have a strong enough population to make it through the winter. When I looked through them, they only had about 6-8 frames of bees, a decent amount were still drone that hadn't yet been thrown out of the hive.

My dad and I decided that rather than take chances and let the wax moths or other pests take over the almost empty hive during the next few months, to combine what little bees and stores are in the White Hive, with one of his hives that are light on both.

Sounds like a good idea to me; I can help out one of his hives, and "secure the comb" of at least one deep brood box now before pests move in.

To help speed up the newspaper combine method since cold weather is already here, I killed the queen in the White Hive so that they'd be queen-less for two days prior to combination. The loss of a queen should make them want to chew through the newspaper and join another colony a little easier.

We plan to move the now queen-less White Hive from my house early on Saturday morning over to my dad's house across town and combine the hives there.