Merging hives

Yesterday I looked under my lesser hive (#4) and found not much progress, but there were some brood cells.  Not much in the way of capping's on the bottom board either, so I decided to combine my 2 swarm hives.  Yesterday I moved the two hives close together so the bees in #4 could find the new hive easier when I made the switch.  This morning was cool and I new the #4 hive would be in a ball so I broke out the smoker and took the roof and blanket off #3 and removed the inner cloth and replaced it with a sheet of paper.  I then took my knife and cut some slits in it so the two hives can inter-mingle their scents.  I will remove the paper in a couple days after the have chewed through and joined together.  I then took the 2 top boxes (they had built down into the second box) from #4 and placed them on the paper.  I then opened the side entrance for the bees to use in the interim.  Within a couple minutes the bees which had been in the bottom box of #4 had found the new entrance.  So far so good.  We'll have to wait on the queens to see if they will fight it out or just accept each other.  Later  As a side note, I found six little kittens about 4 weeks old, out in the barn under the wood pile, anyone need one???  Will have to feed and make friends with them so they don't get to feral before
I give them to the HS.