Combining colonies

On last inspection I realised that one of my colonies wasn't going anywhere useful. This is the one that had a drone laying queen, and had made both what appeared to be a queen cell and an elongated 'drone queen' cell. I couldn't see any eggs or larvae, so there was no active queen and, fortunately, no laying workers either. A test frame from another colony had shown they were eager to produce a new queen - but it's getting a bit late in the late in the year, and it would be mid-September before the colony had its' own foragers.

The brood box was also top-heavy with drones which were clambering over each other on all surfaces, so much so that I suspected that this hive was attracting all local drones that had been evicted from their home colonies. (I've read that this can happen, but have never before seen evidence for myself.)

There were three things I could do: