Gone rogue

[maddydog]

Out apiary definitely worth considering. You may find the nuc starts getting feisty when it builds up. I've just moved my home hives to my out apiary as the bloke who 'tends' the allotment at the end of my garden complained. He's not been stung, just objects to them being there lol. How he reckons his raspberries get pollinated is anyone's guess. Bit rich really considering his plot looks like it gets visited twice a year If I didn't have somewhere else to put them then I would have refused.

As for combining, sometimes I've found that just changing the queen can calm once angry bees. Other times you end up with 6-8 weeks of angry bees until they die out.

 

[Millet]

You are very lucky ... perhaps being in the Beginners Section ... people on here who have even breathed the word Petrol in the same sentence as bees have come in for a great deal of stick. I have a degree of sympathy - there's nothing more challenging for a beginner than bees that have become aggressive and it highlights the need for a Plan B when you keep bees in proximity to either your family or the Public.

Credit to you for rethinking your original drastic plan ... others would probably have just done the deed and kept quiet.

I have had kamikaze bees for the past three years and not once did i consider petrol, i just put my head down and got on with them, this year however the original Queen carked it and all 5 virgins from her failed to make it home from mating flights, so i am now left with a hopelessly Q- dwindling colony that will be no more soon.
That leaves me with three nice Queens to go into winter with, fingers crossed they get through winter ok ready for splits and more new Queens next year.

And a BIG Yes credit to Shinyside for changing his mind with petrol..

 

[maddydog]

I have had kamikaze bees for the past three years, this year however the original Queen carked it and all 5 virgins from her failed to make it home from mating flights

You probably dodged a bullet there!

 

[Erichalfbee]

And a BIG Yes credit to Shinyside for changing his mind with petrol..

I'll second that.
Thank heavens for this forum; at least the poor chap asked and was persuaded towards an alternative.

Well done Shinyside.

 

[Millet]

You probably dodged a bullet there!

I might have dodged a bullet but i also also dodged thousands of stings with double layers when messing about with the bees my lady friend/dogs and horses where not so lucky , i will be wearing my budgie smugglers next year with the new bees i have now when inspecting..

 

[ShinySideUp]

So you have two nucs and one full size hive ?

No, just to clarify, I have two hives and one poly nuc. The bees in the poly nuc are lovely bees and their queen was in my first, docile, hive but the workers were getting ready to throw her out (one supercedure cell) and weren't taking notice of her. She is doing fine in the poly nuc and all her new bees are paying her the proper respect. If she survives until Spring and goes in to a full hive I may find that her queen substance is just not powerful enough for the larger space. If this occurs then I will have to let the hive deal with her accordingly.

 

[bjosephd]

Hey ShinySide,

Yup, rather distressing when you witness other animals in your care being attacked by bees. I had a rather distressing sheep incident this season.

Good news you aren't going down the petrol route... I think you may have found it very distressing and regrettable.

Re the 'have to wait 6 weeks' thing... my understanding is genetics is only part of the story, and the queens pheremones etc can be a significant factor... ie, you change your queen and the bees pretty much calm down 'overnight'.

I AS'd a grumpy hive this season and I kept the flying side of the split queenless. The queenless flyers were far less grumpy than the queenright side of the split!

 

[pargyle]

No, just to clarify, I have two hives and one poly nuc. The bees in the poly nuc are lovely bees and their queen was in my first, docile, hive but the workers were getting ready to throw her out (one supercedure cell) and weren't taking notice of her. She is doing fine in the poly nuc and all her new bees are paying her the proper respect. If she survives until Spring and goes in to a full hive I may find that her queen substance is just not powerful enough for the larger space. If this occurs then I will have to let the hive deal with her accordingly.

So ... that's OK ... You can still sort it out. Squish the queen in your aggressive hive and then immediately move it as far away from the original site as you can get it. Put the Nuc where the aggressive hive was and the flyers from the aggressive hive will go back to the Nuc and bolster the numbers in there. The following day (or the same evening, once the flyers have been bled off to the nuc) you do a newspaper combine with what's left of the aggressive hive with the other full size hive you have. Once they are combined you need a clearer board .. very simple to make if you don't have one. You put the clearer board between the two full hives and clear the bees from the top one.

You then have a full size hive empty of bees which you then site where the Nuc is and you then transfer the frames and bees from the Nuc into the full size hive.

You end up with two good size colonies in two full size boxes and an empty Nuc with some drawn frames .. always useful.

With luck the aggressive bees will calm down under the influence of the queen pheremones of your calmer hives fairly quickly and you have two strong colonies to end the year with and go into winter.

 

[drex]

Good plan, but I would move the aggressive hive first, then go in after the queen. The flyers will have left that hive returning to original site. Fewer bees in which to look for the queen and more docile nurse bees. Looking for queen in a hive full of aggressive bees can be difficult, if not daunting. Before now I have even resorted to full suit, with jacket on top and leather gloves ( only time I would use them), but got the job done with no stings

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Head above the parapet time.

In my first or second year I had a particularly viscous colony. A lot of horses and kids passed quite closely on a public footpath so I was concerned. I killed the queen as preparation to replacing her. No remote potential apiary was known to me.

After 4 or 5 failed attempts at introducing, and not fancying merging them and risking my only other queen, I lost patience and went down the petrol route. Not particularly pleasant, but actually once it was done I was relieved and could start again. Lets face it, they only had a few weeks life ahead of them anyway, and they would have happily sacrificed their own lives in stinging me! They were quite capable of doing serious damage on an unprotected and unsuspecting soul.

While I wouldn't recommend the petrol course, and knowing what I know now I probably wouldn't do it again, but I don't regret doing it and would never judge any beekeeper who did it out of desperation after exhausting possible alternatives.

 

[pargyle]

Good plan, but I would move the aggressive hive first, then go in after the queen. The flyers will have left that hive returning to original site. Fewer bees in which to look for the queen and more docile nurse bees. Looking for queen in a hive full of aggressive bees can be difficult, if not daunting. Before now I have even resorted to full suit, with jacket on top and leather gloves ( only time I would use them), but got the job done with no stings

Yeah that ...I should have thought of it ... it's a useful way to make life a lot easier whether the bees are aggressive or just a big colony with a difficult to find queen.

 

[Poly Hive]

Read some of this with interest.

I am dealing with two rogue colonies at the moment.

One is behaving as I would expect which is to say with in two days of having a new queen present they are quite different in attitude and behaviour.

The other is not. The new queen is there, I have seen her, but she is not laying and the bees are really crap with every vice under the sun. I am leaving them for two weeks to see if the queen can get going or not and if not I will depose the intro'd queen and paper unite a nuc. Not my preferred out come but you deal with what is not what you like it to be.

PH

 

[maddydog]

The other is not. The new queen is there, I have seen her, but she is not laying and the bees are really crap with every vice under the sun.

PH

Interesting. Any thoughts as to why? Duff queen or the bees don't fancy her much and are maltreating her?

 

[For want of a better word]

Read some of this with interest.

I am dealing with two rogue colonies at the moment.

One is behaving as I would expect which is to say with in two days of having a new queen present they are quite different in attitude and behaviour.

The other is not. The new queen is there, I have seen her, but she is not laying and the bees are really crap with every vice under the sun. I am leaving them for two weeks to see if the queen can get going or not and if not I will depose the intro'd queen and paper unite a nuc. Not my preferred out come but you deal with what is not what you like it to be.

PH

Material to make up a half dozen three framed nucs?
Any nasties or nere do wells I get to go double brood... stick on an extra brood box and after removing supers... feed and feed some more!!!
Keep one with the new queen, and bring on your new mated queens in the others... after the 4 days inspection of each to make double sure they are hopelessly queenless?

A thought.... cheaper than petrol!

Yeghes da

 

[psafloyd]

One of my colonies has slowly gone rogue and I can't be having that. I was in my (large) garden with the dogs, minding my own business when bees started flying around my head and around one of my dogs. Dog got stung and while I was taking two others off him I got stung on the foot. We were below the level of the bee hives, separated by bushes and 20 metres away and yet we still got attacked. My second hive is the culprit as I get stung on the hands every time I go near them for inspections. I'm not going to requeen as that will mean another six weeks of
aggressive bees and dogs that will become fearful of the garden. I might also point out that neither I nor my dogs have been anywhere near the hives all day.

My question is, how much petrol is needed to wipe them out and do I just block the entrance and pour it in the top?

I know that many will say I shouldn't do this but my dogs are more important than insects. I shall continue with my other two colonies but this one has to go.

Isn't there someone with an apiary in the middle of nowhere you could leave them while they requeen? It's OK, I've caught up with the thread, now.

 

[Beefriendly]

The new queen is there, I have seen her, but she is not laying and the bees are really crap with every vice under the sun.

Me thinks tis a ying/yang thing. Sometimes the genetics of the bad bees totally overrides any influence "calm" queen substances can have. Got a similar case myself, where re-queening has not made the slightest difference to their temper, even thought the queen had been head of really calm colony prior to this. I can see her offspring (different colour) sitting quietly on the frames whilst all hell is breaking out around me....only 6-8 weeks more to endure.....should never had added their brood....Doh!

On the other hand sometimes it works out very well and they become calm quite quickly. Very much suck and see.