The Widow Maker Hive.

[damienpryan]

Hi All,

I've got two hives next to each other that have some real nasty bees.
I'm planning on re-queening them 1 at a time.

My plan for the first hive is:
Move one of the hives to a new location 5 meters away.
Wait 3 days for all the flying bees to fly out and join the remaining hive in the original location.
Find the queen (now the flying bees are gone it should be easier) and kill her.
2 days later introduce a new queen.

Does this sound a reasonable plan ?
Will the returning bees join the other hive or will they just fight?

Any suggestions on queen breeders ?

I've had to buy new gloves for this hive.
They just keep stinging me on the wrist through my current gloves.

Cheers

Damien

[Sydney guy]

Wow they sound angry lol, I was looking for a good queen supplier this year myself, I ordered at end or August or early September and the earliest I could get some is 19/12/16. I have a couple of Warren Taylors Queens which are great but they are hard to deal with and never return phone calls. Maybe they are to busy for 3 queens lol. I ordered mine from Bonnie who are located on the Central Coast, I will look up there name soon. Bonnie was great to deal with.

I wouldn't move the hive but I have never replaced a queen yet so maybe a more experienced beekeeper can help out with how to do it.

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[Sydney guy]

http://www.mulderapiaries.com.au

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[Andersonhoney]

If the hive is a double, without a queen excluder.  That is there is brood in both top and bottom boxes, then simply lift the top box and slide in a division board. That's it done.
Don't move the hive as this may just annoy them.
So what has this achieved?.  It halves the hive and a smaller hive is always easier to handle. The hive without the queen should raise a new queen which should mate with a drone from another hive and therefore change the genetics.
Within about 10  days the hive with the queen would have calmed down alot.
The queenless hive will still be a bit snappy but different.  Fidgety rather than aggressive (that will make sense when you get to it).
At day ten you can go into the hives, kill the queen in the now smaller calmer hive and put a queen cell  in from the other split. These large aggressive hives seem to build lots of queen cells. Avoid using these for other splits as you probably want to avoid these genes. This is a better option than buying a queen as aggressive hives tend to kill an introduced queen and the weeks of no brood rearing in one hive and a reduced work force in the other will make them easier to handle.
If you want to requeen with a purchased queen do that in a few month.
Lots of info there ask any questions and I'll try to explain.

[Andersonhoney]

Damienpryan I just read your other post (so they swarmed). If these are the hives that had swarmed then they sometimes go a bit weird as the new queens takes over. As if they get impatient waiting for the Virgin queen to mate and start to lay. If this is the case then wait until you have brood from the new queen. They will settle down.
Anyway let us know how you go.

[damienpryan]

Hi Andersonhoney,

The window maker is next to the hive that swarmed.
The hive that swamed was very calm. I though maybe because all the field bees were gone.
Both are 2 boxes 10 frames each with queen excluders.
I am thinking in future or not using queen excluders over winter/spring.
Just too much chance of swarms and that's not good in the suburbs.
But I clearly should have split the hive at the start of spring and got rid of the extra honey.

I am a bit worried about them killing my new queen, hence the plan to weaken them by siphoning off the field bees.
But splitting them would work too.

(My other hives don't give me trouble like these 2!).

thanks for the advice
(and for the link Sydneyguy).

Cheers

Damien

[Andersonhoney]

Well with an excluder you can just do a side by side split. Try to move the queen across, but don't stress about it if the bees are hot (aggressive).again come back in 9 or 10 days etc etc.

[rawfind]

Hi All,

I've got two hives next to each other that have some real nasty bees.
I'm planning on re-queening them 1 at a time.

My plan for the first hive is:
Move one of the hives to a new location 5 meters away.
Wait 3 days for all the flying bees to fly out and join the remaining hive in the original location.
Find the queen (now the flying bees are gone it should be easier) and kill her.
2 days later introduce a new queen.

Does this sound a reasonable plan ?
Will the returning bees join the other hive or will they just fight?

Any suggestions on queen breeders ?

I've had to buy new gloves for this hive.
They just keep stinging me on the wrist through my current gloves.

Cheers

Damien

The problem you may run into and i did once was that they were so agressive and i could not find the queen to kill her, if this happens throw an excluder on the base and shake all the bees off their frames outside the entrance, leave it overnight next day you will find the queen underneath the excluder trying to get back up into the hive then you can squash her. All the other bees will go back in.