Combining nice and nasty hives!

Newbeeneil · Jun 8, 2020

Morning all,
It seems one of my hives that was building quite nicely ready for the main crop has turned nasty since it requeened itself.
On an inspection yesterday the little b****rs started attacking my wrists as soon as I opened them then chased me back to the van after I gave up trying to find the queen for dispatch.
I have another hive of the same size, about 20' away, that is beautiful to handle and I was considering finding the nasty queen and uniting the two.

My thoughts were thus.
When the bees are out foraging move the nasty hive adjacent to the nice hive and wait a few hours to loose the foragers.
Find the nasty queen and squish.
Unite over newspaper. (2 sheets of the local freebee) - I can't afford a broadsheet!
All very well but what to do about the foragers? I can put a nuc on the original stand but how do I reunite them with the original hive??

Any thoughts on the plan?

thorn · Jun 8, 2020

Unless the hive is somewhere that may cause a problem to others, give it a few days. I had a hive that was vicious on one inspection, and nice as pie thereafter. Fortunately it was in my rural apiary.
I can only think that they'd been foraging on the plant equivalent of Stella Artois.

Finman · Jun 8, 2020

Then you will have one nasty hive.. . Nasty bees in the hive will protect themselves as before.

JonnyPicklechin · Jun 8, 2020

I sort of did similar this year and it hasnt worked out so I agree with Finman's warning above. Here is a summary:

Moved nasty main away and let all foragers return to empty box with some BIAS and comb. BIAS was in there to get them to focus on raising a queen.

I then moved the nasty foragers away for a week and then returned with it to the apairy. I then put them back back on top of a nice hive having yanked the BIAS frame and curtailed that shenanigans. But instead of paper unite I used a Snelgrove board and tried to bleed the nasties to the hive below over a couple of weeks.

All its done is turn the new hive nasty. It currently not as grim as the original but its unpleasant....Doh!

To be honest it was an experiment in my out apairy as I am working hard to try different things with nasty colonies.

So far the best advice Ive had on actions post the forager/main hive separation manouvre is (from Emyr and Pargyle) who suggested to just shake out the foragers and leave the apiary for a day to let them sort themselves out.

I know Enrico has been having fun and games in his garden with a nasty colony and was making slow, patient progress. Be interested to hear how he is getting on...

enrico · Jun 8, 2020

I usurped the nasty queen eventually with the nice one over newspaper. It took a couple of weeks for them to settle and then they swarmed! Teach me to give them a couple of weeks to get used to the new queen! Checked them today. Open queen cell so there is a new queen in there and they were a real pleasure to handle. In fact all my hives bar one were gentle as lambs. The other one was more defensive than aggressive. So......to sum up, I did add a quiet hive to a nasty one after getting rid of the nasty queen. They did start to settle down nicely. Then they swarmed and at the moment they are angelic!
E