Agression - nature or nuture?

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Mar 23, 2011
Messages
31
Reaction score
2
Location
S Notts
Hive Type
14x12
Number of Hives
10+
One of my hives has been queenless for around six weeks following a missed swarm early in the year. The QCs were cut down to one, no eggs two weeks after expected hatching and they subsequently raised queen cells from the first test frame I put in (eggs only). During the intervening time they have been very agressive which I put down to being queenless and just got on with things hoping the situation things would get better once a queen was present.

I've re-examined them today and there are now two frames of eggs in a good pattern so expect this to be a mated queen, not laying workers. The bees however are, if anything, even worse. After one somehow made its way inside my hood I decided not to persevere looking for the queen.

So, my question is: how much of aggression is environmental or genetic? I could requeen (or unite with a more placid colony) but I'd assumed they would calm down once they had a queen. Obviously none of the vicious bees are genetically of the new queen so do I just wait for six weeks until the old aggressive bees have died and see how they are then? Or is the agression likely to remain even though the agression pre-dates the emergence of the new queen? There are only eggs at the moment, will they calm down once there is brood to look after?
 
The bee inspector said here that the bees will be better once the eggs turn into brood. They were. :)
 
Interesting, I'd not come across that before. I haven't seen any signs of DWV previously.

So, let's say it is that, do I just wait out six weeks as before and hope that the new queen has a better genetic resistance to the virus than that of the old workers? The hive is in an apiary of four other colonies. Two are parent/child of an AS, and the other is unrelated (local mongrel). The AS parent hive remains calm, I've not examined the daughter hive yet. The temperament of the other hive is fair.
 
DWV is there all the time - it's not there or absent. Overt disease comes and goes depending upon Varroa levels. Has the OSR has just gone over in S. Notts? Perhaps that and the previous queenless state made them a bit tetchy. My recollection is that Kakugo was restricted to the brains of 'guard' bees. It's just a very minor variant of DWV and the original paper hasn't been followed up by anything more definitive.
 
So, my question is: how much of aggression is environmental or genetic?

There's a bit of both, but mainly genetic overall (environmental is weather, end of OSR flow etc). An old classic study showed that at least 2 genes were involved, but there is much more (and more genes) to it than that.
An interesting observation has been F2 aggression. Take a pure mated Italian , Carniolan etc and first generation (despite who they mate with) is usually fine. Second generation (F2) is usually aggressive. I've found that the F2 (at least with Buckfast bees) is not good, but better, compared to many local bees. But local bee aggression is also very varied and seems to be regional. Some have very calm productive local bees...where I live we don't.
It's complicated with no single answer fitting every situation or locality.
 
A little bit of hope then - the new queen will be an F1 Buckfast. I'll check again on Sunday when there should be some hatched brood and see if the situation has changed. The experimental scientist in me thinks that I'll leave them for now regardless and see whether the new bees hatching in 3-6 weeks time are any more pleasant than the current ones. I have a batch of queen cells which have just been placed in mating nucs so should have some mated queens if they are still nasty.
 
If you want to see aggression in bees... look at a tree bumbles
Worse than any Carnie cross!!!

Yeghes da
 
Obviously none of the vicious bees are genetically of the new queen so do I just wait for six weeks until the old aggressive bees have died and see how they are then?

It's both nature and nuture, but how they interplay is as variable as the weather, so I'd give it the six weeks before passing judgement on the new queen.
 
Personally I would wait it out to see if they change nature in 6 weeks but then again all my hives are in fields well away from joe public so it only affects me!


If you want to see aggression in bees... look at a tree bumbles
Worse than any Carnie cross!!!

Yeghes da

Really!?

I have found the complete opposite. I have removed 2 bird nest boxes (only when they are in a dangerous position will I remove them) from peoples back gardens and both are in my back garden. One didn't have anything that I could use to attach it to the back fence with so it is sat on my patio wall at chest height. Both myself and my OH have stood within 2 feet watching them and gardening and have experienced no aggression at all!!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top