Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Kirk-o on June 07, 2005, 09:41:51 pm
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I have a hive that has always been mean I mean Mean I tried to go through them sunday and they were so aggressive I couldn't see there were so manyy bees after me.So I toke I split them Half with new box and deep brood box and left the same were the hive has been .I figured I go and go through them find that mean queen and kill her because I got two queens comming the one split was calm not mean at all looked for queen could find her what ever look again tommorrow.Went to the other split they came after me again millions of bees got stung many times again ther were so many bees it was impossible to look for the queen.They followed me to the truck 1500 feet away . Help
kirk-o
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There are africans in Southern Cal you know.
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I have a hive like that. I would requeen, but I can never find the queen in any of my hives yet.If I smoke them good they can be worked but it is traumatic cause even smoked the keep hitting my veil like bullets. as soon as I get enough experience I will get a new queen. but I bought two queens this year and then lost them both, and the mean one is the only one I might get honey from this year. they wern't too bad when I first got them. I think they have been changing their queen themselves for several years, so I am sure they at least have some african blood. they even send out a few warriors if I am using the tractor too near the hive. Were you using smoke and a veil?
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If they are africanized bees you can still keep them (unconfortably) and succesfully harvest honey from them while minimizing stings. INspect and harvest at night with a red light. Bees perceve red as black so they think its completely dark and therefor can't see you. They won't fly when they can't see so they must walk/crawl. YOU should still use smoke though with a veil.
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You can split the colony multiple times into nucs to find the queen. Smaller colonys are more manageable, easier to negotiate, and isolate the queen. Just have a plan for requeening them and combining them and not letting them raise up their own queens. Otherwise you may just multiply the problem.
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Most daughters of hot hives I've seen are quite calm. Being mean is not so much a function of the mother, but of the drones she mates with.
But I would definitely get rid of the old queen.
The method is basically simple but it helps if you have equipment to work with. The method is divide and conquer. Put an empty box at the old site with some combs a lid and a bottom. This is so the field bees (who are usually the meanest) have somewhere to return to. Put each box on it's own bottom with a lid at least ten yards away or so. Then after they calm down from all that, look for the new split with the most bees and split that box in half. Don't even try to find the queen, just put half the frames in another box with a lid and a bottom (a nuc works well for this). Then after they calm down, you can try to look for the queen and if that's not doable split them again. The split with the most bees is usually the one with the queen. Once you find the old queen and kill her, you can requeen each split if you like or combine if you like. The advantage to leaving them split is each will be less defensive as a small hive than as a large hive, so the results are quicker.
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:( They are Africans you will have a hard time requeening them
They will kill a new queen or damage her by chewing her legs in the
Cage. Your best bet is to make a weak nuc of 1 frame of caped brood
And only nurse bees. Let the new queen establish at least 2 frames
Of brood Then find the old queen and kill her. Then recombine the
Nuc with the nasty hive. You have to do this slowly use a screen board.
Then leave them for at least a 2.weeks. If you have a hive that’s not
Aggressive use that hive to make your nucs you can make a stronger
Nuc using a gentle bees and speed things up. They will take a laying
Queen with a brood nest. You can try about 5 drops of tea tree oil
Into a pint of water use a spray bottle to apply it. Use it like liquid
Smoke. Don’t keep splitting them you will end up with a lot of nasty
Bees to deal with. We do not need any more bee stories on the news.
You could just start over with some new bees. Whatever you do don’t
Let them build up to a dangerous level. And if they do deal with them
Using a clean bug sprayer with soapy water this will kill them without
Contaminating your hive. As soon as it is dry you can put bees back in it.
If you have supers on it take them off before you put anything on them.
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An aquaintance asked me to help him go through his colonys yesterday. He said they were mean as hell. He also said he had a colony abscond, and one he started from a package this year. I asked him when the last time he had gone through them. He said never, he just pulled the top 2 boxes off and extracted them each year. UH OH
I smoked them and pulled the top box. All capped honey. Mad bees. I pulled the second box, same as before...all capped honey and more angry bees. At this point, I was using a wire to pull through the burr comb to "saw" the boxes apart. The second deep was a disaster. Hanging comb, burred up so badly, the frames came apart before they would budge. He had only put 9 frames of foundation in. No sign of a queen, no brood of any age, no eggs, just alot of angry bees. I'm sure they swarmed and the virgin queen never made it back. The bottom box was worse, and it appeared he had tried to look in there once, broke a couple frames, so just left the comb standing on the bottom board. Queenless pretty much explains their poor attitude initially. And just got worse and worse as I broke things down. Both my hands took some punishment and looks like catchers mitts this morning. I was anxious to get out of there, but now, I'm interested in how things work out. Guess I will wonder back over there next week.
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If hive is really mad, you can it lift away and you put nuc in the place, or another hive. Then you put screen between two hive part to unvoid battle.
Bees fly themselves to the old place and you can put nuc and them together when they are same odor next day. Half of bees are obliged to change hive.
After that you can devive mad hive in two part. After couple of hours you can se that another part is restless and it is without queen.
Or you do same trick after a week and bees around queen will be less.
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:( They are Africans you will have a hard time requeening them
They will kill a new queen or damage her by chewing her legs in the
Cage. Your best bet is to make a weak nuc of 1 frame of caped brood
And only nurse bees. Let the new queen establish at least 2 frames
Of brood Then find the old queen and kill her.
thanx that is probably what went with the queens I lost ,as I was trying to make nucs with these bees.I have many extra boxes, so I will try to combine what you and bush said later this summer. but first I want to get at least one super full of honey from them for my own table and they are all I have that is big enough to make any , any way it is a good way to expand. Maybe I can make it work in my favor.
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Finman. Actually, after pulling all the capped honey off, we did split and move them. Culled all the bad comb and gave each half a frame with eggs from his package bees. I called the local bee supply store and they have some queens for sale. Hopefully he will inspect and verify what they do with the brood and grab up a queen when things sort themselves out the next few days. We talked about that and combining after things settled down. Unfortunately, I have my doubts that he will do anything. He only seemed interested in being able to pull a couple supers of honey each summer.
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hey psychco don't you use gloves. At first I didn't but the bees made me first I used some suede ones that I had, and they left several hundreds of stingers in them but they were still getting my wrist, Now I am using mr. clean rubber gloves and they allow you to feel like you do, without gloves I did get one sting through them last weekend but I had used them to pick blackberries and think that guy just found a little hole. the time they got my wrists it swelled a little for two days and itched like crazy but that is the only time I have swelled
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Sometimes I wear them, and I was foolish not to have them with me. This is a perfect example of things going from bad to worse and only using my head as a hat rack.
I don't normally swell much either, so this was a suprise.
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I think that is a function of just too many stings in the same area. A few years ago I go hit on the belly by 21 yellow jackets My wife was at work and I thought with that many I could get sick, She came home to take me to the er but they were all calmed down by then. Both She and my son are allergic to yellow jackets. they haven't got stung by my bees yet.