This section is from the book "How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey", by Walter T. Kelley. Also available from Amazon: How To Keep Bees And Sell Honey.
When a colony becomes hopelessly queenless (no brood) or has laying workers or is very weak and has no apparent chance of building up in time for the honey flow or wintering it is advisable to unite it with another colony. The usual method to do this is by using the newspaper method.
To unite a weak colony with a strong one remove the cover and place over the stronger colony a sheet of paper. Place a match or a twig at each corner on top of the paper to allow ventilation then place the weak colony above.
The bees normally face the queen. She is much larger and lighter colored than the workers. Experience helps in finding the queen promptly.
Remove the cover from the hive where you wish the new hive to stand, then lay a single sheet of newspaper over it. On top of this paper, at each of the four corners, lay a match and on top of this place the brood nest from the queenless colony.
The matches will prevent the bees from smothering as this provides ventilation. The bees will chew through the paper and become so excited in getting rid of the paper that they will overlook the strange bees and work together thereafter without fighting.
Experienced beekeepers have difficulty in finding queens as there is no sure or quick way. A few beekeepers put a drop of finger nail polish on the thorax (the middle part onto which the legs and wings are attached) of the queen. The bees do not seem to like queens with this paint and seem to supersede these queens more quickly than they do a normal queen.
The best procedure is to open the hive with a minimum of smoke and to glance over the frames thoroughly but as rapidly as possible, looking especially close when you see a frame containing fresh eggs and spending but little time on frames of honey or sealed brood.
In looking for the queen it is best to have the grass cut short in the bee yard and to set the frames against the cover which is leaned against a stand or another hive. If the queen is not found on the frames look on the inside of the hive body and on the bottom board and if not there reassemble the hive, re-examining the combs as they are replaced in the hive.
To strain out the queen and drones set the old hive to one side and set a new one in its place (but without frames) and place a queen excluder between the two bodies. Shake all the bees onto the excluder, smoking them gently from time to time. When finished the worker bees will be in the bottom hive body and the queen and drones will either be on the excluder or sides of the top hive body. The queen can be found without difficulty. Kill the drones by mashing them.
If there are eggs in the combs you can be reasonably sure that the queen is there whether you locate her or not.
Italian queens are much easier to locate than either the black or the grey Caucasian queens because of their yellow color. Young queens are also easier to find than older queens but the beginner will rarely be able to locate a virgin queen that has been hatched a few days.
In requeening it is necessary to locate and kill the old queen. If she cannot be found it becomes necessary to strain the bees through a queen excluder as follows: set the old hive to one side and on its location place a bottom board. Then place an empty hive body on this bottom board followed by the queen excluder, then another empty hive body. Remove the frames from the original hive and look for the queen. If you do not see her shake or brush the bees onto the excluder in the empty hive that you have prepared and proceed on through all the frames, occasionally smoking the bees slightly in the empty top hive body to force them down through the excluder and into the empty body below. When finished, if the queen has not yet been found, brush, scrape or smoke the bees adhering to the side of the empty top hive body, onto the excluder and smoke slightly. You should locate the queen there on the excluder provided that you got all bees out of the original hive.
In a queenless hive, after all of the brood has hatched, it often happens that worker bees start to lay eggs in the cells in the vain hope that they may perpetuate the colony.
It is easy to tell a laying worker colony because the eggs are not laid regularly as a queen does and in many of the cells will be from two to twelve eggs, placed here and there, some on the cell walls.
A laying worker colony appears to be contented with its laying workers and it is practically impossible to get them to accept a queen because the beekeeper cannot locate and kill the laying workers which may consist of half or more of the bees in the hive. Therefore about the only thing to do is to unite this colony with another strong hive, using the newspaper method described elsewhere in this book. Do not attempt to unite a laying worker colony with a weak colony because the laying worker colony will overpower the weak colony and kill the queen.
A failing queen may lay more than one egg in a cell but they will not be placed so irregular. Also a young queen with too few bees to cover the brood may lay more than one egg in a cell for lack of room. Therefore the beginner needs to look closely for the queen and not make too hasty a decision.
 
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