Apis Horrilibus

[MuswellMetro]

On the apiary i share with two others an Italian strain strong june Nuc with marked queen,all laying fine has on this years first inspection turned into Apis Horilibus

it was almost impossible to remove a frame, the guards are up in your face and follow for 75yds perhaps 100yds, you cannot get rid of them under trees and there are "up for" it for several hours

i have been heavily pinged and followed in the last few weeks before the first inspection just changing a varroa board on a hive 20ft away without otherwise disturbing them

other nucs from the same source have no problems and theses apis horrilibus make my bad bees look like pussy cats

now the beekeeper is distraught as we have suggested destroying them to get rid of the drones ASAP, as by the time they get a new queen, thene all the bad drone will be out mating

Or do others disagree with this cull approach

 

[merylvingien]

Pinging? Following?

And you think thats bad? LOL

After last years killer swarm from hell (i actually think they were the ones used in the film "The Swarm") i dont have any problem killing problem bees! They do the honey bee cause no good at all and are a liability.

edit: backpack sprayer, fairy liquid till the water is bubbly! Bad bees... DONE!

 

[oliver90owner]

Cull all the drones in this colony?

Requeen soonest; you've already put up with them for several weeks.

Cull the queen now and let them replace her, for the time being. Requeen with a different line as and when available.

Remove to an isolated apiary for the time required to resolve the issue.

Alternatively, encourage drones and park it next to an apiary of someone you dislike!!

Regards, RAB

 

[fredbloggs]

MM

Ummm they do sound unpleasant?

Do they have drones now and is this apiary generally accessible ? If so that ups the ante? The owner needs to consider the options . Spend some dosh on a known nuc and immediately return to pleasant bee keeping (combined with the satisfaction of knowing that euthanasia was the most philanthropic decision

Or take less drastic & reduced cost action (eg requeen) where the results are less predictable and longer to realise?

Finding the Q to cull sounds an interesting exercise ?? Volunteers anybody?

 

[Poly Hive]

Kill queen.

Unite.

Raise queens and return nuc to owner with pussycats to play with.

I am doing the precise same today but believe me mine are worse.... nasty little lot and so chop chop.

KISS


PH

 

[thurrock bees]

when you go though them and sort the queen out, put a empty brood box where they are, move the brood box the queen is in away ( over 4 feet), then all the flying bees will return to the empty box while you are working them, the number of bees around will be decreased

 

[Vergilius]

I thought mine would be a bit like this, but, thankfully, they seem to have calmed down a bit over winter - in 2 inspections haven't recieved a sting yet!


Ben P

 

[susbees]

After our little brush with our bees from hell last year...we swapped them with a very experienced beekeeper who keeps a bad bees out apiary I am still a bit in awe of anyone who says they can just find and remove a queen from such a colony.

I shouldn't have read this thread at 01.30 this morning as I've been racking my brain at odd times since (and at 09.00 they've just stopped begin odd on a w/e) as to what they used to use to stupify a hive temporarily to allow such manipulations. It wasn't tobacco smoke, something else in the mix that KOd them for a little while (and yeah, it was legal).

Any idea what it was?

 

[mstrom]

I was recommended to kill these bees asap instead of requeening, to prevent 1-their spreading these bad behavious genes and 2-to avoid 6-9 weeks of trying tend to these bees. Althouhg the apiary isn't in a populated environment there is a riding stable about 100 -150 yds away with kids and pets. I am a first year beekeeper and i am now 0/3 on nucs, the first one never laid much so didn't get going the second one came sans queen (i combined these and they actually survived the winter) and now the beehive from hell

 

[MuswellMetro]

I was recommended to kill these bees asap instead of requeening, to prevent 1-their spreading these bad behavious genes and 2-to avoid 6-9 weeks of trying tend to these bees. Althouhg the apiary isn't in a populated environment there is a riding stable about 100 -150 yds away with kids and pets. I am a first year beekeeper and i am now 0/3 on nucs, the first one never laid much so didn't get going the second one came sans queen (i combined these and they actually survived the winter) and now the beehive from hell

hi Molly
hope you did not mind me posting about your bees ( they chased off two nuns, who came visiting the cemetery this afternoon)

as i was not there on saturday, how bad were they in comming up,

Geoff

 

[Tom Bick]

Hi mstrom

It sounds like you have been through the mill and had a bit of bad luck and I am sorry to hear your story if its any consolation non of it is your fault its just bad luck, I had a very nasty colony that had to go it was dangerous and although I tried to sort it and was making good progress one to many people fell foul of them and the decision was made.

It’s a tough call but Geoff is very experienced and would not recommend it without first looking at all the alternatives. Good look for the future and remember you will have more to learn and gain from this experience as I know I did.

 

[Poly Hive]

Mstrom?

The 9 weeks is not so. The act of requeening, in this case uniting will change them pretty much immediately.

The new pheromone form the new queen will moderate their behaviour.

I will check my little darlings later this week but I fully expect them to be quite different.

PH

 

[mstrom]

hi geoff, oh dear poor nuns. a guy just offered me space on his small holding which is very far away from any civilization in borehamwood/bushey, should i try to requeen and put them over there as a nuc and let them go from there and then i could bomb the hive in mill hill but that woudl mean leaving them as is until thurs/fri and it sounds as if they are getting worse...

 

[Scutellator]

On the apiary i share with two others an Italian strain strong june Nuc with marked queen,all laying fine has on this years first inspection turned into Apis Horilibus

it was almost impossible to remove a frame, the guards are up in your face and follow for 75yds perhaps 100yds, you cannot get rid of them under trees and there are "up for" it for several hours

i have been heavily pinged and followed in the last few weeks before the first inspection just changing a varroa board on a hive 20ft away without otherwise disturbing them

other nucs from the same source have no problems and theses apis horrilibus make my bad bees look like pussy cats

now the beekeeper is distraught as we have suggested destroying them to get rid of the drones ASAP, as by the time they get a new queen, thene all the bad drone will be out mating

Or do others disagree with this cull approach

Disease?
Sometimes the bees are trying to tell the beekeeper that something is not right. It might be a first sign of disease, long before any other symptoms to occur. The italians are like the gypsies - they rob the other hives whenever they can and that is the way they can easily get some disease .

 

[Northants_new]

out of interest, does it make bees more aggressive following the first invasive inspection of the year? My first colony was very mild mannered last year. First inspection was pretty much the same. Yesterday they were pinging my veil 200ft from the hive, in the shade 5 minutes after closing the hive.

 

[MuswellMetro]

out of interest, does it make bees more aggressive following the first invasive inspection of the year? My first colony was very mild mannered last year. First inspection was pretty much the same. Yesterday they were pinging my veil 200ft from the hive, in the shade 5 minutes after closing the hive.

did you wash your suit, molly is going to try a different washing powder or sometimes if they are foraging on oil seed rape, can cause a single mindedness,

but i agree my hives were more agressive to day on second inspection than i expected but i shook some of them into a new boxes, so expected some reaction, i had a sort of agreesive group hug around me most of the afternoon


maybe the warm weather suddendly coming and build up means more 3 week old bees to be guards

anyway, thanks to all for commnets,

robbing was considered we have had a little black feral bee causing a problem before

Molly (Mstrom) and i will talk to the esteemed chairman and see what can be done when we inspect again next week, quarantine in a field in the middle of nowhere for 9 weeks is one possibility while they are requeened, hope it is not near anyone on this forum

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Personally I wouldn't rush into anything too drastic. I always try to work out why the bees are being aggressive. True, it may be that they are just a bad lot and need requeening, but I've got a colony that were practically psychotic last weekend but were fine this weekend. All I did in the meantime was give them a bit more space.

 

[Gardenbees]

out of interest, does it make bees more aggressive following the first invasive inspection of the year? My first colony was very mild mannered last year. First inspection was pretty much the same. Yesterday they were pinging my veil 200ft from the hive, in the shade 5 minutes after closing the hive.

Very interesting - my nicest colony have been absolute [insert name of female dogs here] for the last few days, stinging my legs when I went to put them onto a new, empty brood box, and following me whenever I'm within about 20 yards of the hive. It isn't the worst that bees get by any means, but it's making the inspections a lot more difficult. Today they were decidedly shirty with me when I went to put some new frames in the other hive (a long hive, with a colony that is behaving OK). It makes beekeeping a lot less enjoyable - especially when you need to do quite a lot of careful checking for signs of early swarming. Replacing that particular queen will be interesting if they're still like this.

I've ordered another queen, on the understanding that I'll use her elsewhere if they've settled down in a few weeks' time, but in fact they haven't re-queened themselves, so a change of queen is unlikely to be the explanation (unless she's ailing in some way, but the brood rate would suggest otherwise). The old one (only a year old) is still there, and until last week I'd have said she's about perfect. In fact I was very keen to make splits from that colony. So I'm inclined to the same thoughts as GreatBritishHoney: there is obviously something making them unusually defensive at the moment. Possibly the huge buildup at a time when it's still rather nippy at night, and the full May nectar flow isn't quite on yet. Or maybe it's all the queen wasps prowling about (the garden is full of them, like New York taxis). I don't know.

 

[DorsetB]

I had the same problem last year - queenless (only managed to get that close & find out much later)hive in mid-summer, would attack even before you could smoke them: the kids had started to get stung in the garden, even when hanging up the washing nearly 50 yards away, even the dog got stung. forget about trying to get a couple of puffs under the roof, pinging on veil, on head etc.

One day I thought they had calmed down because I had smoked them silly for about 1/2 hour before lifting the roof, and they seemed much better. Then half way through looking for the queen, the pitch of the buzzing went up, and off they went again, except this time I also had to contend with them crawling into (ie down!) my wellies (didn't notice as I was so busy trying to go through the hove to find the queen).
Rather than remove my boots and risk being stung again by the bees I would have abraded against the inside of my wellies, I had to reach for the garden hose and poke it into each wellie in turn to drown them (and get some sting relief!).

By then I had hundreds of stings on my suit, so just turned the hose on the hive and drowned the lot: very sad, but they were also attacking the chickens and the pub next door has a beer garden not far from my apiary, so thought it best to just keep the hose on.

Funnily enough, went through a very quiet hive later that day, retrieved brood & nurse bees, requeened, and they ended up being really nice.

The further downside was the next two days as the poison from the stings settled in and I could barely walk, stings from my toes to my kneecaps.

I hate killing anything but there is not only your own wellbeing to consider, but also that of other people.

In retrospect things should not get that far but you have to balance short-term deviations from normal behaviour with an out and out BAD hive. Sometimes they are just bad-tempered because of the rape, then they settle down fine. Sometimes they are tetchy because they are between queens and it takes a while to find out what the problem really is and what to do thereafter, so I really do consider it a last resort to take such drastic action, but would do it again tomorrow if I had to.

 

[Bucks_Boy]

when you go though them and sort the queen out, put a empty brood box where they are, move the brood box the queen is in away ( over 4 feet), then all the flying bees will return to the empty box while you are working them, the number of bees around will be decreased

I do this with my allotment apiary -- I cant afford "over-defensive" colonies so I move the hive early in the morning to to bleed off most of the flyers and they get the petrol treatment at the end of the day.
Then I can find the queen relatively unmolested the following day