Expediting requeening of aggressive hive

[Obee1]

I need to requeen a really aggresive hive as soon as possible and am not sure of the timings required for each step. I intend to house the newly purchased queen (which will arrive before 1pm on her designated arrival day) in a poly nuc. I obviously need to obtain some frames from existing stock. Speed is of the essence.

Question 1. What is the best time to do prepare the nuc ready for queen? Day before? Hour before?

Question 2. What should I put in nuc. Capped brood. BIAS? Bees on frames plus shake in more nurse bees too? The bees that happen to be on the frames? How many frames at minimum? Bear in mind these bees are vile, fly up off the frames and I want to get in and out as fast as possible.

Question 3. How long should the main colony be left queenless before combining back with Nuc via newspaper.


Question 4. As my poly nuc has a non removable floor I will have to move queen and contents to full size brood box in order to do newspaper combine. unless there is some neat trick I am missing?

Over to you.....

Obee

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I would just get into the colony, find the queen, kill her then an hour or two later introduce the new queen on a frame with emerging brood, making sure the candy is well covered so that the bees can't get at it. Check in a copule of days and if the bees are just gathered around the introduction cage taking a heqalthy interest in the queen, uncover the candy, close up for a few days - open up just to check they have released her then leave them alone for a week or two.
If you decide to go down the nuc road - same kind of thing - once new queen arrives, go out and make up a nuc - frame of food, frame of drawn comb or one wwith emerging brood mostly vacated, frame of BIAS and two more of whatever, have a cupof tea then introduce queen in the same way.
In each case it may be beneficial especially if the weather is like this, to feed a few pints of 1:1.
One handy wheeze (and why I say forget the nuc and do it in one hit) to make the hive easier to inspect is to move the hive three or four feet to one side and replace with an empty brood box (with a few frames in if you want) Go and have a cup of tea (with a 'livener' in if it will help you relax) and when you come back a lot of flying bees will be in the empty box making it easier for you to find the queen and decorate the nearest gatepost with her.
To unite nuc to main hive - as you said, transfer the nuc into a full BB and unite over paper

Whichever method you choose an hour or two Q- is sufficient before inroducing new queen (don't even bother with that if uniting two colonies together.

 

[B+.]

I need to requeen a really aggresive hive as soon as possible and am not sure of the timings required for each step. I intend to house the newly purchased queen (which will arrive before 1pm on her designated arrival day) in a poly nuc. I obviously need to obtain some frames from existing stock. Speed is of the essence.

Question 1. What is the best time to do prepare the nuc ready for queen? Day before? Hour before?

Question 2. What should I put in nuc. Capped brood. BIAS? Bees on frames plus shake in more nurse bees too? The bees that happen to be on the frames? How many frames at minimum? Bear in mind these bees are vile, fly up off the frames and I want to get in and out as fast as possible.

Question 3. How long should the main colony be left queenless before combining back with Nuc via newspaper.


Question 4. As my poly nuc has a non removable floor I will have to move queen and contents to full size brood box in order to do newspaper combine. unless there is some neat trick I am missing?

Over to you.....

Obee

One method:
Straight swap mated queen for mated queen. Keep the old queen in an Apidea (if you have one) just incase.
This can work if the queen has come from a hive nearby and hasn't had time to go "off lay"

Alternatively;
take a nuc (2 frames of brood and one of food with all adhering bees plus a few frames shaken in). Ideally take this to another apiary so you don't lose all the flying bees back to the parent hive.
After nine days, all the brood will be sealed (check for emergency cells as they will most likely have started some). Shake the bees off each frame so you don't miss any and destroy all emergency cells.
They are now hopelessly queenless and will accept any queen you give them.
Insert your new queen under an introduction cage pushed in to the comb down to the midrib (remove the attendant bees from the travelling cage...don't use the travelling cage to introduce the queen as they sometimes reject a queen with these).

Allow the new queen to lay at least a few frames of eggs (worst case scenario: if she is killed, you still have eggs from a good queen which you can raise a better queen from).
Dequeen the original hive and wait 9 days. Again you probably have emergency cells which have to be destroyed. Since this is an aggressive hive, move it a few metres away so you can go through it without being stung.
Recombine the hive with newspaper. The only queen available should be the good one you want.
Take your time and do this right.

 

[oliver90owner]

Q1. Made up week before, but needs more preparation between times, obviously.

Q2. Normal make-up, apart from a queen? Thd really simple way, if too vile for you, is to take the bees from your other colony!

Q3. A week, or a little more, would be good, for one (obvious?) reason.

Q4. Clearly have to do something. That much should be obvious! The neat trick is having a normal classic 5 frame nuc with removable floor?

You are missing the sjmple things in beekeeping.

 

[Finman]

.
If you make an AS with one brood frame, AS will be queenless. When bees cap the gueen cells after 4 days, they will accept the new queen easily. Or you take the brood frame off and bees feel themselves totally queenless.

Then it should be easy to find that agressive Queen and kill it.

IT is easy to take that one brood frame off and eliminate Queen cells.

Why that complex handling? - furious hive may be a painfull job.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Q4. Clearly have to do something. That much should be obvious! The neat trick is having a normal classic 5 frame nuc with removable floor?

I have a poly hive, permanently dummied to 5 frames for just this purpose.
Works a treat making unites a doddle.

 

[oliver90owner]

Works a treat making unites a doodle.

Hi Erichalfbee,

I sometimes doodle on a piece of paper, but never yet on a unite.

I'll put it down as a typo....

 

[Erichalfbee]

Too quick for me....it took me 20 seconds to correct the typo and you were there before me

 

[mbc]

If it's a paynes nuc there is an extension brood body available at a reasonable cost

 

[Obee1]

I would just get into the colony, find the queen, kill her then an hour or two later introduce the new queen on a frame with emerging brood, making sure the candy is well covered so that the bees can't get at it. Check in a copule of days and if the bees are just gathered around the introduction cage taking a heqalthy interest in the queen, uncover the candy, close up for a few days - open up just to check they have released her then leave them alone for a week or two.
If you decide to go down the nuc road - same kind of thing - once new queen arrives, go out and make up a nuc - frame of food, frame of drawn comb or one wwith emerging brood mostly vacated, frame of BIAS and two more of whatever, have a cupof tea then introduce queen in the same way.
In each case it may be beneficial especially if the weather is like this, to feed a few pints of 1:1.
One handy wheeze (and why I say forget the nuc and do it in one hit) to make the hive easier to inspect is to move the hive three or four feet to one side and replace with an empty brood box (with a few frames in if you want) Go and have a cup of tea (with a 'livener' in if it will help you relax) and when you come back a lot of flying bees will be in the empty box making it easier for you to find the queen and decorate the nearest gatepost with her.
To unite nuc to main hive - as you said, transfer the nuc into a full BB and unite over paper

Whichever method you choose an hour or two Q- is sufficient before inroducing new queen (don't even bother with that if uniting two colonies together.

Option one of removing unwanted queen and adding the new queen an hour or two later sounds easy but if it's that easy to do why do so many people advocate introduction via a nuc first?

does the fact it is double brood box with a minimum of 14 frames of brood (last time I looked) make any difference to your advice ( forgot to mention that bit!)

 

[Obee1]

One method:
Straight swap mated queen for mated queen. Keep the old queen in an Apidea (if you have one) just incase.
This can work if the queen has come from a hive nearby and hasn't had time to go "off lay"

Alternatively;
take a nuc (2 frames of brood and one of food with all adhering bees plus a few frames shaken in). Ideally take this to another apiary so you don't lose all the flying bees back to the parent hive.
After nine days, all the brood will be sealed (check for emergency cells as they will most likely have started some). Shake the bees off each frame so you don't miss any and destroy all emergency cells.
They are now hopelessly queenless and will accept any queen you give them.
Insert your new queen under an introduction cage pushed in to the comb down to the midrib (remove the attendant bees from the travelling cage...don't use the travelling cage to introduce the queen as they sometimes reject a queen with these).

Allow the new queen to lay at least a few frames of eggs (worst case scenario: if she is killed, you still have eggs from a good queen which you can raise a better queen from).
Dequeen the original hive and wait 9 days. Again you probably have emergency cells which have to be destroyed. Since this is an aggressive hive, move it a few metres away so you can go through it without being stung.
Recombine the hive with newspaper. The only queen available should be the good one you want.
Take your time and do this right.

New queen is being posted so 24 hours in transit. Also not sure what you are suggesting. Just place a queen in with no cage?

 

[MuswellMetro]

i've done similar to Finman but use a wally shaw snelgrove 2 AS

on old site put a new brood box of foundation minus two frames, move the old hive 10-ft to right, take out two frames and shake of all bees, place these frames in a new brood box

foragers return and make Qeen cells

knock all of thse down at day 9, 24 hourss later introduce your new queen in cage (ie day 10)

move old box 10ft other side and repeat at day 14 then find the old queen in depleted hive, cull and recombine

 

[Obee1]

Q1. Made up week before, but needs more preparation between times, obviously.

Q2. Normal make-up, apart from a queen? Thd really simple way, if too vile for you, is to take the bees from your other colony!

Q3. A week, or a little more, would be good, for one (obvious?) reason.

Q4. Clearly have to do something. That much should be obvious! The neat trick is having a normal classic 5 frame nuc with removable floor?

You are missing the sjmple things in beekeeping.

Q2 My gentle colony was a five frame nuc just 2 weeks ago so don't want to compromise its growth.

Q4 I hunted tinternet for such a nuc but the only one I found was double the cost of a normal one. As I'm a new beek im building my equipment up and went for the cheaper nuc option and bought two

I don't see what simple things I'm missing. I know how to requeen but in my circumstances wondered if there was a way to minimise time with hive open and expedite having manageable bees. Each day they are like this is a problem as they are in my garden.
Sometimes there is a nugget of advice on here that is someone's sneaky little shortcut or way to make things simpler. And sometimes it is imparted without resorting to insults.

 

[B+.]

New queen is being posted so 24 hours in transit. Also not sure what you are suggesting. Just place a queen in with no cage?

Only for the straight-swap method. This can only be done when you take a queen out of one hive and put her straight into another so her behaviour is unchanged by periods without egg-laying

 

[tudorcd]

I am so amazed by how difficult it all is !
Here I just pop a protected ripe queen cell into the brood box (can give details if anyone wants), and then leave the bees to do the following as they have been doing this stuff for some while. Steps along the way:
Check cell after 4-5 days that she has emerged - if not, repeat.
Virgin queen has hatched safely (protected) and is ignored by the bees
She kills the incumbent queen (the match is not fair but that's nature for you)
Gets mated
Lays
About 9 weeks after this action the last of the old generation are gone, nice bees and happy property owner.
Interesting that sometimes the bees much nicer a week or two after cell insertion, maybe a pheromone thing ?

 

[B+.]

I am so amazed by how difficult it all is !

Obee1 is trying to improve the behaviour of her colony though so she needs a mated queen.
Whenever I have tried to do this quickly in the past, they have killed the queen. Thats why I say the best solution is to introduce a queen that came through the post using a Nicot-type introduction cage.

 

[oliver90owner]

without resorting to insults.

No insults, lady. Just stating the obvious. Your state of colonies was simply that you had two. You were asking an awful lot of questions if you really know how to requeen simply. Seems like your first mistake was siting your colonies on one fixed site instead of having somewhere else to move a colony in a situation such as this. Thinking ahead can really simplify beekeeping.

 

[Obee1]

I do have an alternative site all ready to move them to. Still need to manipulate a horrible colony though no matter where it is and as there are many different schools of thought wondered if there was a way to requeen that involved less angry bee handling.

 

[Erichalfbee]

does the fact it is double brood box with a minimum of 14 frames of brood (last time I looked) make any difference to your advice ( forgot to mention that bit!)

If you have 14 frames of brood make a nuc up with two of those and introduce your queen to that. Keep that at home, move the nasty colony to the site you already have earmarked and in a couple of weeks you can introduce your new queen.
If that double brood is in a shallow, then use the shallow as your nuc

 

[Finman]

.
The most difficult with angry hive is to find the Queen. You must use smoke quite much and Queen starts to run in the hive. Who know what mess will emerge. And a beginner should find the Queen.

To give advices to beginner is not easy. If he knows what to do, he would not ask.

If you want to kill your new Queen, just follow the advices given here.

(what a mess here)