I re queened one of my hives last year but it looks like the old queen may have killed off the new one. I had a hard time trying to find her and I think she may have beaten me. Today, though I am sure that the hive is the nasty one and unfortunately stung my neighbour so they have to go - they stung me a lot too! The hive is currently three boxes high with the top super fairly empty. I'm thinking I will move the too top boxes onto another base and away from the bottom box. Hopefully the queen is in the bottom box. I hope this is the case because I have just moved the QE down from between the two top boxes to between the middle and bottom box. I'll let them settle down to day as my neighbors are having a party and I don't want anyone else to get stung. What to do with the nasy queen. I normally shake all the frames and try to catch her as she walks in but I think these girls are too vicious for this. Should I spray them with insecticide? Is there a way I can kill them and keep the comb or should I just destroy it all?
Thanks for any advice
Tim
It sounds like a big hive. Have you thought about doing a split or two and requeening? Reduced numbers a lot of time means a new beginning. Your neighbor, if a reasonable person may understand your plight and your plan to weed out aggressive traits.
....JP
I would follow JPs advice, divide and conquor. It will also make finding the old queen much easier. I find it much easier to find the queen in 1 or 2 boxes verses 3 or 4.
So far my neighbors are understanding. I think he got stung by one of the bees that followed me up to the house - ~100m! When it couldn't sting me it found someone else. I will divide the hive up. If I move the two top boxes onto another base some 50m away will all the workers find their way to the old hive leaving the two supers empty or will they stay in that location for a while? I haven't had bees this vicious before and I am reluctant to try to find the queen as I don't want other people to get stung ( I live next to a park) This is the first time in 3 years I have had this problem. The bees only attack when I'm going through the hive. Its going to be raining with any luck this evening and for the next few days. I probably will have to take Friday off work to do the split.
if you are going to just separate the boxes, it should only take a few minutes. another advantage that i see, is that you should know in a couple of days which box has that nasty queen and you can off her. if you are lucky, you'll end up with 3 nicely requeened hives!
keep us posted. this is the kind of split i wish to do this year. i'd love to know how you did with yours.
You will have some amount of drifting, but adding an entrance reducer helps and placing grass in front of the opening or a branch will help the bees reorient to the new hives you make. If you have the resources I would buy new queens for each hive and requeen each one. I spoke with Mick last night in ventrillo chat and he's having a problem with mean traits as well, this same thing was discussed there amongst myself, Mick and John, aka Beemaster. Also, I wonder if you are somoking your hives correctly before you go into them. You are smoking them right?
Sincerely, JP
Move them one box at a time and then look for the queen in each or just requeen each box that has a decent amount of bees.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm