Hello! - New-ish Beekeeper in Poole Dorset

[SuperHoney]

Hi guys!
Thought I'd join in the fun by getting involved with this Beekeeping forum and learn a few things along the way.

I'm 24 years old and in my second season of Beekeeping...and my god... it's SO MUCH FUN!

Anyways, after losing one of my hives overwinter I was pretty upset! But I've just made my first ever walk away split. I gave the hive a frame with a queen cell w/ an egg so hopefully that was the correct thing to do, along with a mix of 5 frames of brood nectar and pollen.

Additionally I've got a problem queen in another hive...very aggressive (but productive-melifera melifera i believe) and can't go in the garden without being stung...so I've ordered another queen, she is arriving Wednesday - any advice on this would be much appreciated! -

I've decided that I prefer 14 X 12 brood boxes so I'm looking to change from standard national to the 14x12. Obviously this will cause a problem initially as they will build comb on the bottom...so my thought is to put in a mix of frames, and once they've built out the 14x12 I can remove the smaller frames and add more 14x12s? - is this correct?

Any local beekeepers on here from Bournemouth/ Poole area?

Anyways...I've probably written way too much for an introduction so hope this is allowed...I'm quite passionate about this little hobby so any and all advice is much appreciated!

Cheers Mikey

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[Swarm]

Hi guys!
Thought I'd join in the fun by getting involved with this Beekeeping forum and learn a few things along the way.

I'm 24 years old and in my second season of Beekeeping...and my god... it's SO MUCH FUN!

Anyways, after losing one of my hives overwinter I was pretty upset! But I've just made my first ever walk away split. I gave the hive a frame with a queen cell w/ an egg so hopefully that was the correct thing to do, along with a mix of 5 frames of brood nectar and pollen.

Additionally I've got a problem queen in another hive...very aggressive (but productive-melifera melifera i believe) and can't go in the garden without being stung...so I've ordered another queen, she is arriving Wednesday - any advice on this would be much appreciated! -

I've decided that I prefer 14 X 12 brood boxes so I'm looking to change from standard national to the 14x12. Obviously this will cause a problem initially as they will build comb on the bottom...so my thought is to put in a mix of frames, and once they've built out the 14x12 I can remove the smaller frames and add more 14x12s? - is this correct?

Any local beekeepers on here from Bournemouth/ Poole area?

Anyways...I've probably written way too much for an introduction so hope this is allowed...I'm quite passionate about this little hobby so any and all advice is much appreciated!

Cheers Mikey.

Welcome to the forum.
You should not believe everything you are told, two years into beekeeping and making statements like the above.
Look elewhere on the forum and you will find a thread all about an aggressive buckfast colony.

 

[SuperHoney]

Welcome to the forum.

You should not believe everything you are told, two years into beekeeping and making statements like the above.

Look elewhere on the forum and you will find a thread all about an aggressive buckfast colony.

Right...I've read through what people have been saying in the aggressive buck fast chat and from what I understand is...

A) If you have a tame colony that gets agressive from one year to the next you either have a queen supreceedure where both queen's are still alive running around in the hive...
OR
B) If she is 2 generations old then bad or unwanted traits can occur and therefore she needs to be culled and replaced...which is what I was planning on doing anyways...

The colony was already agressive when I got them last year so I guess B) is correct?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by your comment... Sounds to me like you're having a go...anyways what I wrote before was just my thought process so some feedback would be appreciated.

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[Ian123]

Hi and welcome introducing a new queen to an aggressive hive may not be the easiest thing I’ve generally found particularly aggressive hives don’t like new queens. Introductions can and do fail at the best of times, it’s best to introduce a new queen to a nuc made from young newly emerged bees to improve your chances. So make your nuc up from the calmest bees you have, once established and up and laying you can unite or bleed frames of brood off the aggressive hive......Ian

 

[Erichalfbee]

with Ian. Make up a nuc then unite with the hive you find difficult. If you have to make a nuc up from that hive then at least introduce her in a push in cage
Mike posts here when he has time. Have a look at his video
https://youtu.be/OakM0HN0vJI

 

[Antipodes]

Mikey...I've found that locating the queen in an aggressive colony can be pretty difficult to be frank. So many bees being so aggressive.. it can feel out of control quickly. So many stings in the suit.
There are ways of dividing and conquering the colony to make it easier to find the queen but I've never done it. Perhaps search for a thread about that or hopefully someone experienced with it will offer a step by step approach.


edit: or go with the alternative approaches above. They sound good.

 

[SuperHoney]

Thanks for all the help and ideas! I've been spending the day doing a bit of research.
So...as much as I would like to split the colony down into loads of nucs and requeen them, I don't have the necessary equipment or money at the moment.

So I could either try and get them to accept the queen on Wednesday with unknown success. If I do this, I will try the idea from the video.

Or

Could I...kill the queen and merge one of the dosile colonies with the aggressive hive (with newspaper in-between)? From what I understand this is normally done with 2 small colonies to create 1.

Or

I'm having a delivery of 2 5 frame nucs in June so...I could cull the queen and split the aggressive hive into each of the nucs.
(I added brood from aggressive to my docile colony earlier in the year to bolster numbers which worked)

What do you think?

Cheers
Mikey

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