Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...

Some marriages are made when eyes meet across a room. . . and they know.

Some arise out of more prosaic circumstances. The phrase "Do you have a cold chisel?" will  prompt giggles and knowing looks at my house.

Some relationships grow, and with shared experiences and the passage of time, develop into deep companionable partnerships.

Some marriages aren't so much of a choice. The families decide that the young people will be best served by this pairing, at this time, and from what I hear, it works out fairly well a lot of the time (barring abuse, but come on folks, this is a fairly lighthearted post).

With that in mind, I pulled a yenta today. When I collapsed the hives into smaller bodies, one looked questionable. A frame of eggs was dropped in, so if they wanted, they could bring up a queen, but over the past week, traffic in and out of that hive had dropped precipitously. Well, bee traffic had dropped. Ants had sped up their six-legged highway, and it was time.

Without smoke, I jacketed up and lifted the honey super and queen excluder off of the "doing well" hive and set it aside. Then, a sheet from today's newspaper laid atop the exposed, nicely full, bottom box.

I lifted the single hive body off of Failing Hive, and popped it atop the newspaper. Honey super and queen excluder back on top, despite the way that would strand hive #1s bees above hive #2. . .

When I went back out later, the temperature had dropped quite sharply, and the bees were all indoors. There was an unhappy buzzing coming from this new union. Will it be a successful marriage of two hives, in which both become something bigger than they were apart?

Or will it be a massacre of the weaker hive? I won't know until a day or so goes by, but smaller hive wasn't going to make it anyhow. Besides, "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while"