Uniting Weak Colonies & Requeening Calls
Late Summer Is Decision Time
By late August, you have a good picture of which colonies are strong and which aren't. A weak colony at this point isn't going to catch up before winter — there simply isn't enough season left for it to build the population and stores it needs. The decision now isn't whether to intervene, it's which intervention to make.
Signs a Colony Won't Make It Alone
Low bee numbers relative to the space they're covering, a patchy or absent brood pattern, thin stores despite a normal season, or a queen that's clearly failing — laying drone brood in worker cells, or barely laying at all. Any one of these on its own is worth watching. Two or more together, this late in the season, means the colony needs help now rather than a wait-and-see approach.
Uniting: The Newspaper Method
Uniting a weak colony with a strong one is usually the safest late-season option. The newspaper method — a single sheet of newspaper between the two brood boxes, with a few slits cut in it — lets the colonies merge gradually as they chew through the paper, reducing the risk of fighting. Always unite the weaker colony onto the stronger one, not the other way round, and remove the weaker queen first if you're planning to keep the stronger queen.
Once united, size the entrance for the combined colony's actual strength rather than assuming it's back to full strength immediately — a Hive-Five Multi-Guard lets you scale the opening up or down as the colony settles, without needing a separate reducer on hand.
When Requeening Makes More Sense
If the colony has decent numbers and stores but a clearly failing queen, requeening can be worth it instead of uniting — particularly earlier in this window, since a new queen still needs time to mate and start laying before the season closes. Mated queens are harder to source this late in the year, so this option narrows quickly as autumn approaches. If you're past the point where a new queen could establish and build a worker population before winter, uniting is the more reliable choice.
Knowing When to Let a Colony Go
Not every weak colony is worth saving into another hive. If a colony shows signs of disease rather than simple weakness — abnormal brood patterns with a bad smell, visible deformed wings, unusually high mite loads — uniting it with a healthy colony risks spreading the problem. In that case, isolating and dealing with the health issue directly comes first, before any decision about uniting or requeening.
The Bottom Line
A weak colony in late August is a decision, not a wait-and-see situation. Assess honestly, unite where uniting makes sense, requeen where there's still time for it to work, and don't let sentiment carry a genuinely struggling colony into a winter it won't survive.