Hello everybody I have a question and I hope some of you have an answer. If a hive is queen less are they aggressive? I have a hive I checked yesterday and didn't find any brood but the bees were quite calm, I have read that normally when a hive is queenless it gets aggressive. Any thoughts on my options.
Quote from: wltwine on June 22, 2011, 06:09:58 AM
If a hive is queen less are they aggressive?
Sometimes. Sometimes not. My personal experience is that more often than not, the difference is very subtle.
As for no brood - none at all? No open brood, no capped brood, nothing? How long has it been since your previous inspection? If you're not seeing any brood, you may have been queenless for over 3 weeks. Do you have another colony? If so, I'd pull a frame of eggs/open brood and give it to this colony. If they're queenless, they can begin building a replacement queen. If they have a supersedure queen that perhaps hasn't started laying, you're just giving them some extra resources.
Agreed. If you can, give them a frame of eggs and brood and see what they do with it. You may have a virgin in there post-swarm, or if they are queenless they'll use that frame to rear a new one.
Quote from: wltwine on June 22, 2011, 06:09:58 AM
Hello everybody I have a question and I hope some of you have an answer. If a hive is queen less are they aggressive? I have a hive I checked yesterday and didn't find any brood but the bees were quite calm, I have read that normally when a hive is queenless it gets aggressive. Any thoughts on my options.
What type of bee? Russians will do a brood dearth in the middle of a honey flow. They do this for several reasons. A brood dearth means all mites must choose an adult bee to ride and this allows the bees to reduce the mite population through grooming and being bucked off. The brood dearth also means the mites can't produce more mites. Lastly the bees can then use the brood cells to process the nectar collecting during the height of the honey flow.
Once the flow is over, they move the processed nectar out to storage combs and cap it and then the queen is allowed to resume laying eggs to build up for the next flow.
Carnoilans do this also but to a lesser degree than the Russians. Just because the hive doesn't have eggs, at the moment, doesn't mean the hive is queenless. The queen also slims down a bit during the brood dearth as it lasts for up to two weeks.