Hello Everyone:
I am getting ready to requeen a very agressive hive with a new queen. I have a strategy that I've never seen in the books, but I think it might work.
1. Move the brood up to the top of the hive (I feel sure the queen is there).
2. Put a Bee Escape below the brood, to slowly empty the brood.
3. Put a Queen excluder below the Bee Escape, so that the Queen will be able to leave the brood, and she can go through the Bee Escape?, but won't be able to get through the Queen excluder.
4. Put another Bee Ecape below the Queen Excluder, so that I will be able to remove the empty brood, find and kill the queen without the bees coming out of the hive.
5. Put a fume board on top of the Brood, which should force all the bees out of the brood.
6. After a few hours, find the queen stuck between the Queen Excluder and the Bee Escape, kill her, and then introduce the new queen the next day.
Also, I want to do all of this at night, since the agressive bees won't sting me so badly in the dark (I hope).
I know this sounds extreme, but these bees are very mean (not like the rest of my hives), so I assume that they are Africanized (I live in Texas, where the Africans Bees live). The thought of searching frame by frame for the queen while thousands of African bees try to kill me is not a fun thought.
Anyway, any suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks,
Beau