Aggressive colony

[jimbob55551]

Good morning all.
I have a hive that was my first one that I got as a nuc last year, they are in a commercial hive with 4 full supers and are pretty angry bees. They were quite angry at the beginning of the season and would often crawl onto my gloves immediately trying to sting me during inspections, now however they take flight from the supers as soon as the crown board is opened and are all over me trying to sting me. Yesterday I went to put a clearer board on which took some doing and I had to lift the supers off one by one and then back on, I had to walk away a few times as there were so many bees on me and a few stings were getting through and one even managed to git in my suit and get me in the throat (luckily no reaction at all). I put a brood chamber on top of the existing one with the queen excluder still in place so they have some space below the clearer to give me time to work out what to do with the little darlings. I really don't enjoy inspecting them anymore so need to do something asap. Will requeening work and what is the best way to go about it as I don't really want to be going in the brood box more than necessary. Any other options?

 

[jeff33]

I feel your pain, not the kind of bees you want to deal with. To avoid restarting the same threads again, type in re-queening a angry hive in the search tab. There are several threads on this with options and techniques. Basically you need to separate your flyers from the brood and queen and re-queen this half. Good luck.

 

[enrico]

Yes, requeening will work. I did one of my hives earlier in the year and I did a neighbours yesterday. The difficulty is finding the queen. You need to be bullet proof and you need everything at hand. I missed the queen on the first check through so I sieved them through a queen excluder as there were not many drones, found her doing it that way. Amazingly the bees were not too bad but I had moved them to another location an hour previously to allow all the fliers to go back to the original position where I had left a frame of eggs and brood from a good hive. I removed all the eggs and brood from the old hive before I recombined.see what happens!
E

 

[Heather]

I would leave till Spring now, and requeen then. Don't normally say so, but you will need to buy one as soon as they become available. But let them crack on, on their own, just ensure they have food for winter..

bee keeping should be enjoyable and those are bastards!! Not nice for a new beekeeper.
But be aware, they may just be being VERY protective of their honey, and when you open them up later they will be babes. I have screamed 'petrol soon' to a hive as they were so foul on a consecutive visit.. and next time they were very calm..either nectar flow over or they understood my threat!!!

Have you any mentor living near you that could help. Do you belong to any bee keeping Division.. they usually do help out.. even to come to check for you , with you keeping a social distance, if you ask them.
Up to you which road you go down here, but don't put up with **** bees!

 

[philipm]

Bite the bullet ,get dressed up as if your going to war thick clothes under suit double thickness of gloves move the main hive away leaving a hive in its place and the supers.
You will then have less bees to tackle .Find the queen and squish her probably worth buying in a new queen beforehand but there is still plenty of time for them to make a new queen or though she may be stroppy as well.

 

[madasafish]

Drones from aggressive hives mate with queens and no doubt produce more of the same..

Requeen asap.. advice above works.. You do not want those genes in the local population of bees- they will come back and haunt you or another beekeeper...

I follow the "dress up as if going to war camp" and always have a well lit smoker.. and a water spray. Bees sprayed gently with water tend to fly not very well hence reducing the flying bee numbers.



It is important you think through what you are going to do in advance and not when doing the job. I don't think well with angry bees trying to sting me... I consider each step and what equipment I need and where to put things etc. Makes me more confident I know what I am doing...

I tend to find the horrible queen a week before and mark her white so I can find her quickly.

Then a week or so later the day of Q killing and requeening is much simpler.

 

[The Poot in Somerset]

Good luck Jimbob, which ever route you take.
Once sorted and you have gentle, calm bees again, you will feel a great surge of contentment.

 

[For want of a better word]

The Summer season may well be over in your neck of the woods.
Get the crop off... treat for varroa and feed for winter.
If they survive the Winter, find the queen in the Spring and requeen then... doing it now may be too late for the colony to produce winter bees if you loose the new queen, and of course you will not be doing too much poking around for what remains of this beekeeping year....
Things may be seasonally different in other parts of this Corona infested island of ours!!

Chons da

 

[beeno]

Good morning all.
They were quite angry at the beginning of the season and would often crawl onto my gloves immediately trying to sting me during inspections?

That was your warning shot. You should have been thinking if they are like this at this time of the year, what are they going to be like at full strength! Requeen ASAP from different strain. Come spring there are no Q available until you are into the season. Good luck!

 

[Fritillary]

Yes good luck with them.
I dealt with an aggressive colony one spring with lots of good advice such as above from the forum. (I was lucky in that I could leave it over the winter as it was somewhere people wouldn't be at risk, until the earliest I thought I could get away with giving them a comb+eggs from anor. colony, having removed all brood and the queen.) Until then I did find that changing the washing powder I'd been using for my suit to a completely unscented one helped. I didn't find the queen, but just ensured that having been moved away from the original site, it was impossible for her to return & enter the new box I'd put there. I made sure she wasn't on each comb as I moved them back one by one into the new box, and had put a queen excluder in front of the entrance and placed a crown board on top. - I can see that with lots of bees in the hive in the summer that might be more difficult/risky.

 

[philipm]

Its going to be a long winter if the season is already over in some areas it only July the summer is only just starting!!!!

 

[joelsoo]

Whilst at this topic, where removal of old queen is necessary, is there an effecient method to effeciently find the queen amongst the mayhem, than the standard method of spotting 1 in 30000?

there are times when the queen is smart and not easily spotted (she might have just moved as the frame being pulled out, to another adjacent frame or hiding at the gap at bottom of national brood box etc)

i had a very swarmy colony this year which i simply cannot spot the queen after 3 through inspections (with 2 beekeepers!)in the end my mentor told me to prepare a new hive floor, put a queen excluder on it, move the original hive aside, put this new prepared floor with QX on the hive's original spot, and shake ALL the bees out to the GROUND in front of this new setup, put each beeless frames of brood into a brood box above the queen excluder, excluded prevents the queen from getting back into the brood.. The bees will crawl back into the hive as u will put the combs of brood back into the brood box above the floor with the QE (bees will go back to the brood).

next morning lift off brood box and as there is only little bees between floor and QE, its much rasier to find the queen there.

any other methods anyone can suggest?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

my mentor told me to prepare a new hive floor, put a queen excluder on it, move the original hive aside, put this new prepared floor with QX on the hive's original spot, and shake ALL the bees out to the GROUND in front of this new setup, put each beeless frames of brood into a brood box above the queen excluder, excluded prevents the queen from getting back into the brood.. The bees will crawl back into the hive as u will put the combs of brood back into the brood box above the floor with the QE (bees will go back to the brood).

next morning lift off brood box and as there is only little bees between floor and QE, its much rasier to find the queen there.

any other methods anyone can suggest?

Bit of a silly method really. Think Mike Palmer's method is best. Move brood box with colony in to one side, replace with empty BB.
Empty brood box with QX fixed to bottom sat over this new BB.
Take each individual frame from original BB, shake into new top box which you then move to one side just enough to pop the now shaken clean brood frame into. Repeat for each frame then wait a few minutes for the workers to migrate through the QX to the brood frames below - you are then left with just the queen in the top box.

 

[pargyle]

Bit of a silly method really. Think Mike Palmer's method is best. Move brood box with colony in to one side, replace with empty BB.
Empty brood box with QX fixed to bottom sat over this new BB.
Take each individual frame from original BB, shake into new top box which you then move to one side just enough to pop the now shaken clean brood frame into. Repeat for each frame then wait a few minutes for the workers to migrate through the QX to the brood frames below - you are then left with just the queen in the top box.

Yes ..that's the best way... the only thing I would add is if there are really a lot of bees (and you have lots of kit !) is to move the hive you are going to deal with a bit away from where they were originally .. then put a box with a frame in it on the original spot to collect all the foragers. Leave it for an hour and you will then only have the non-foraging bees and the lazy foraging ones left in your box so fewer bees to seive. Once queen is found.. hive back to original site and tip in the ones you have collected. Bif of a faff but I find the foraging bees tend to be the ones that give you the most grief in a colony that is agressive.

Either way, it's a daunting task for a beginner. Suit up to bomb proof level - tape round cuffs and top of boots and check well for any holes in your suit. If it's just a jacket .. two layers of trousers.

 

[Amari]

Good morning all.
I have a hive that was my first one that I got as a nuc last year, they are in a commercial hive with 4 full supers and are pretty angry bees. They were quite angry at the beginning of the season and would often crawl onto my gloves immediately trying to sting me during inspections,


Our bee inspector visited last week. The last colony was particularly aggressive. He was wearing only nitrile gloves and the bees began attacking his wrists and stinging (amazingly he didn't flinch - when I get stung I recoil and drop whatever I'm holding).
I reached for the Olbas oil (recommended to me on the forum https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0013G8JLM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and smeared it on his gloves. He was most impressed because the bees stayed clear. Surprisingly he was unaware of this manoeuvre.
PS: that queen is no longer with us...

 

[joelsoo]

Bit of a silly method really. Think Mike Palmer's method is best. Move brood box with colony in to one side, replace with empty BB.
Empty brood box with QX fixed to bottom sat over this new BB.
Take each individual frame from original BB, shake into new top box which you then move to one side just enough to pop the now shaken clean brood frame into. Repeat for each frame then wait a few minutes for the workers to migrate through the QX to the brood frames below - you are then left with just the queen in the top box.

i tried the method MIke palmer suggested that to start, because i thought i was given a silly suggestion when mentor told me to pour out all the bees to the ground....

Intending to use top brood box as a funnel, seive all the bees through the QX, and hope the queenwill be seived like a pebble and rest of the bees like sand go down through the queen excluder.. however, them bees instead of going down, kept crawling up from the sides of the brood box as i shake them into the funnel... some do go down, but most kept crawling up!! until the whole inner walls and overflowing sides of the brood box was completely covered with bees. i thought to smoke them down, they started flying all over the place instead!

i then resorted to the method the mentor sugested and found her in the space between floor and QX the next day, when they are all crawled back in via entrance from the ground....

revisiting mike Palmer's method again, what did i do wrong that they kept crawling up from the sides?!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

however, them bees instead of going down, kept crawling up from the sides of the brood box as i shake them into the funnel... some do go down, but most kept crawling up!!

I forgot - Mike puts a line of duct/gaffer tape aroud the inside top edge of the box, apparently the bees don't like crossing it.
You did put each brood frame down into the bottom box as you were shaking them down did you? that also will draw the bees down to cover the brood.

 

[joelsoo]

I forgot - Mike puts a line of duct/gaffer tape aroud the inside top edge of the box, apparently the bees don't like crossing it.

You did put each brood frame down into the bottom box as you were shaking them down did you? that also will draw the bees down to cover the brood.

Ah OK that might be the reason why mine kept coming up then, I didn't have duct tape. yeah i put the brood frames all at the bottom brood box, as i run double brood box for this hive.

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