The devil's hive

[tejas]

I’m the owner of the hive from hell. To say it’s hot is an understatement; I got popped twice in the head today when I walked within 10 ft. of the hive.  This hive was requeened last spring, I ordered an Italian queen but am guessing I may have gotten a buckfast by mistake. Ok, now for the questions I’m obviously going to requeen but I’m looking for tips on finding the old queen.  I have a hard enough time finding her in calm conditions much less when I’m being beeeeesieged . I’m thinking about placing a queen extruder between the brood boxes about a week ahead of time to at least isolate her to one box or the other. Any tips for inspecting while under fire?

[Shizzell]

Smoke....and more smoke...and did i say smoke?

[Jack Parr]

I’m the owner of the hive from hell. To say it’s hot is an understatement; I got popped twice in the head today when I walked within 10 ft. of the hive.  This hive was requeened last spring, I ordered an Italian queen but am guessing I may have gotten a buckfast by mistake. Ok, now for the questions I’m obviously going to requeen but I’m looking for tips on finding the old queen.  I have a hard enough time finding her in calm conditions much less when I’m being beeeeesieged . I’m thinking about placing a queen extruder between the brood boxes about a week ahead of time to at least isolate her to one box or the other. Any tips for inspecting while under fire?

Set a deep box on a piece of plywood and set an excluder on it. The set anothe deep box on the excluder.

Take one frame with attached bees and shake them out in the deep box. A little smoke on them and they should go down through the excluder. Keep doing this until the queen shows up. Shouldn't take long if you start with the frames comprising the brood area.

Try spritzing some sugar water on the bees. Sometimes that helps.

I have noticed that after you start doing a severe disruption of the hive the bees tend to become confused and seem to lose some of their agressiveness. Smoke the air around you also and that seems to help somewhat. Smoke your hands and clothes before you start and that seems to help also.

Sometimes you lick out and find the queen right away.

[JP]

Tejas, do you own a full suit? Sometimes you just have to go verrry slowwwlly. Once you check the obvious, check inside of hive box sides, & check cells carefully, sometimes she may have her head in a cell. Good luck.

[Apis629]

Coloration is also important in finding the queen.  What I've noticed is that it's alot easier to find a light colored, italian queen, against the black and leather color of her daughters than to find a black striped queen against the color of her predominantly black daughters.  With that said, are the bees mostly a light or dark color?

[ian michael davison]

Hi all
Set a single box hive beside the hive in question and if you can, add one of those queen pheromone strips on a lenth of string. This is done in the morning.
Smoke the main hive and push a piece of foam in the entrance. If you can get somone stupid (volunteer) :lol:  Suit up and move the hive some distance away. The further the better.
Leave a few hours and do your inspection any flying bees that have left the hive will bee in the new box, and any bees that take to the air during your inspection will go to the new box.
Do your inspection what ever you have decided. Then just swap the hives over, crack the lid and taking your piece of string gently pull out the pheromone tube.
 What makes you think you got a Buckfast queen????


Regards Ian

[Joseph Clemens]

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by, "queen extruder", sounds like it would be kinda painful for the queen.

[Finsky]

If your hive is mad, move it to another place 10 feet. Give empty hive on old site and give them one frame of larvas from easy hive. So foraging bees fly to old site. After two days it is much easier to handle that mad hive. And it is easier to find mad queen.

So you get two new queens and put them into hives.  It takes a couple of months to get rid off those bees.

[Jack Parr]

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by, "queen extruder", sounds like it would be kinda painful for the queen.

Actually, an " extruder " belongs to the King Bee

Weather it's painful for the Queen is as yet undetermined. Maybe she might just enjoy the experience and release her far-moans oooOOOOOOMGOMG. :P

[Michael Bush]

Here's how I requeen a hot hive.

Get a bottom board and lid for every box in the hive.  If you don't have enough the bottom can be just a board and the top can be just a board propped up to make an entrance.  Get one more top, lid and box.  Move every box to it's own bottom and put the lid off and put the empty box on the old location.  Walk away and let them all clam down.  (of course use smoke generously, but not excessively during this).  When you come back in a while, the feild bees will have gone back to the old box (which we know does not have a queen in it) and each box will be much less defensive.  Start with the box with the most bees in it and look for the queen.  If they are STILL too hot, then put half the frames in another box and wait for them to calm down again.

If you REALLY can't find her, buy a queen for each box and put a queen cage in each box.  the one with the queen will kill the queen in the cage, the others will accept her.  Now you know which one has a queen.  Of course four days after doing this kind of split you can also figure out which box she's in by the one that has eggs in it.

One box of bees is MUCH less defensive than five boxes of bees.  One box of bees MINUS the field workers is much less defensive than one box of bees including the field workers.

[tejas]

Well, even though I can't spell excluder my plan still worked. I placed it between the brood chambers last week and isolated the queen. After inspecting and finding eggs in top box I took Michaels advice and moved it to another location to find the queen. This really helped me to be able to go though it slowly and find her with out being under full attack from the entire hive. I eventually found after going through all frames she was on the side of the box. Hopefully new queen will be more docile. (Hope that’s spelled right.) Anyway just wanted to thank you all for the help.