Gut full of bees!

[Busy Bee]

Hi All,

Does anyone here ever get really pissed off with their Bees, to the extent you wanna exterminate them.

Sorry but sometimes whatever you do with them they just won't play ball doing the opposite every time. I would like to see how others feel when the bees hit the fan sort of speak!.

Busy Bee

 

[Hivemaker.]

"Bees do nothing invariably."

 

[Poly Hive]

 

[jon]

Beekeepers do nothing invariably either!
You need to work with bees, not against them.
If you read through the posts on the forum, how many problems are caused by the bees and how many by the beekeeper?
What situation are you decribing Busy Bee?

 

[Hawklord]

I've kept reptiles, birds of prey, and hunting dogs to name a few. The number of times I've had to retire from a hunting expedition because the dog or bird is not in the right frame of mind. Anaconda's that have been as tame as a puppy. I'm guessing it will be the same with bees, opening the hive one day to find something unexpected and trying to work out what to do to resolve the problem.

Unfortunately there is no 100% guarantee when working with any creature.

 

[Heather]

Well - it aint boring!!

 

[user 382]

Half the fun is seeing/predicting what they wil do, and when they don't play ball, just learn from it.

 

[Busy Bee]

"What situation are you decribing Busy Bee?"

I have 1 colony and I can't get it re-queened, considering scraping the whloe colony moving to a new site and putting in a nuc of new bees.

They have swarmed 3 times, I have givin them eggs, the have killed virgins, they have killed mated queen, they had a drone layer, laying workers, varroa, nosema and now they are eating all the honey out of the stores.

IS THAT ENOUGH FOR YOU!!

Busy Bee

 

[jon]

Is that the colony where you put in a virgin you found on the ground in front of it?
If that virgin had bad wings and failed to mate it could explain everything above apart from the varroa and nosema.

 

[Busy Bee]

Yes it is, that the one (the pests and disease are under control). That particular queen swarmed and is now in a hive and storming ahead.

Busy Bee

P.S. I am not 1 for giving up I shall not give up on them yet!

 

[jon]

Stick at it. Any beekeeper who does not admit to mistakes is not to be taken seriously.
I think this must be the swarmiest year on record.
Colonies I split in May were looking to swarm again by July.

 

[Busy Bee]

I am thinking I shall try one more mated queen and see how it goes, they have been a handful this 8 weeks, from being the strongest colony to the most troublesome. I shall take all stores from them, if all else fails I will united a nuc to the hive. Knowing this hive it will also go wrong.

Busy Bee

 

[jon]

Are you absolutely sure there is no queen in there?
What was the sequence of events during the last 8 weeks?
You could introduce a queen cell inside a hair roller cage and release the queen when it hatches.
I hatch queen cells inside rollers in a queenless colony and then split it up to make nucs with the queens when they hatch.
There is usually no problem with acceptance.

 

[Busy Bee]

1. Swarm lost old queen
2. Found Queen in grass put back into hive, missed a cell.
3. Swarmed, got swarm into nuc. No eggs no cells (hive).
4. Swarmed, got swarm into nuc, no queen. No eggs no cells (hive)
5. United bees to hive again.
6. No Q Cells
7. Put frames of eggs into hive, drew out Queen Cells.
8. Queen hatched became a drone layer
9. Went ot remove Queen Found and Lost her, need to have another look for her and remove before anything else happens.

Have eggs ready to put in from a AMM strain I have less swarmy.

Busy Bee

 

[Polyanwood]

You have had a stressful time of it Busy Bee! Commiserations and fingers crossed.

All of these bad things have happened to me to at one time or another. What I now know looking back is that often I should have left them alone and sometimes when I thought they were queenless, there was a virgin or newly mated queen in there.

 

[hedgerow pete]

sorry to go against the flow of support , but i would personaly spray the lot to kill everyone and start agin with a new nuc, sorry i have never been one for bug***ing about, i will of course be the only one that says that of course , but many will think it, its the same with a swarmy hive, get rid of it, swarms are not welcome either

 

[Finman]

.
I have heard that if you work in sunday, you have no blessing in your work.
Perhaps it is the reason.

 

[jon]

Finman

I never saw you as an evangeliser.
I bet you don't have a religious bone in your body.
I do most of my inspections on a Sunday but have yet to be struck down by lightning, plague of locusts or rain of frogs.

 

[grizzly]

i will of course be the only one that says that of course

Neither you nor Busy Bee are alone, in a very short space of time this season i have moved to "Absolute Zero Tolerance".

 

[Polyanwood]

"Absolute Zero Tolerance".

If they had become dangerous blood suckers roaming the streets in swarms looking for their next human meal, or were a danger to the public, then would have to be killed, but otherwise, why not wear a few more clothes and requeen?