Plan for a Corporate Merger

Here's the plan. Sometime this weekend I will fire up the smoker and stink up the fume board and haul out the wheelbarrow.

We'll head to Rachel-the-healthy first, and replace her cover with the stinky fume board, encouraging the bees to flee down deep into the hive and out of the honey supers. While the fume board is fuming, we'll head over to Sylvia and pop the huge staples out that connect the bottom box with the bottom board.

Then we'll take the two shallow supers off of Rachel, putting them in the wheelbarrow and covering them with a towel to prevent bees from trying to come take their honey back.

We'll put a sheet of newspaper on top of Rachel, move Sylvia's bottom deep to the top of the sheet of newspaper, and then pop the cover on top of the three deep hive.

The top deep off of Sylvia with its trace amount of honey and the two shallow supers will come into the house for processing.

The bees will eat their way through the newspaper, with their respective smells blending. When they break through, they'll become one big happy hive.

Next spring we'll split this huge hive back into two hives.

Rachel will benefit from Sylvia's gleanings, Sylvia's heritage will be preserved.

Sounds complicated, but I'm wildly optimistic.