I rescued some bees from a building on our ranch and they are pretty defensive. They are quite Africanized but they aren't gentle by any means. I have then in two deep boxes with two medium supers on top. They are pretty much packed in the two deeps and only partially in the top super. I want to re-queen the hive but I'm afraid I'll never find the queen since there are so many bees. When I get into the hive they are pretty much swarming my headgear and it's pretty crazy. Should I split the hive and try to narrow it down that way? I'm in deep south Texas and they have been out foraging for a couple of weeks now since there are flowers everywhere.
Put an excluder on top each deep. Wait 4 days and break it down. Eggs are in the one she is in only. Carry it fifty feet or more away and put the others back together. The foragers will stay in the 3 boxes and you will have only house bees to contend with while finding her in the one deep.
That makes sense. I get a little overwhelmed when they are pinging me while I'm trying to look for her. One thing about this colony is that they are quite the honey makers. I had some moths take over a couple of my other hives and these bees seem to be too mean to let that happen.
Quote from: iddee on March 13, 2015, 10:18:09 PM
Put an excluder on top each deep. Wait 4 days and break it down. Eggs are in the one she is in only. Carry it fifty feet or more away and put the others back together. The foragers will stay in the 3 boxes and you will have only house bees to contend with while finding her in the one deep.
Good plan Id.... never heard it done this way. Have split and conquered but not with the twist.
'Pretty much what I had to do last year - divide, separate ( 50' sounds good - I was about 40') & conquer.
One thing I decided to do was leave the mean queen with one medium of drawn & four undrawn , on the original stand. I confined her in the lower two with a queen excluder. She/they drew out 4 boxes and I didn't have to mess with them again, except to harvest.
I've always used the 'divide to conquer' method in the past, after dressing-up like a medieval knight if the hive is really hot.
A method I've heard of, but never used, is to simply insert a couple of protected queen cells, and walk away. The idea being that the bees will view these as supercedure cells, and deal with the 'hot' queen themselves. One queen cell ought to be enough, but two adds a little realism. Of course there's going to be a scrap for dominance, but wouldn't that happen anyway, when natural supercedure occurs ?
Whether this actually works or not, couldn't say, but I've got a couple of 'warmish' hives I'll be trying this technique on this coming season - and will keep you posted as to results.
LJ
Thanks for your responses. I'm kind of new at this so I'll try one of you suggestions.
Id,
At what point in time (example, day 1, day 2...) does he bring in the new queen?
J
I am NOT trying to answer for ID, nor attempt to compete with his experience... I try not to wait more than 24 hours. I have found queen cells started after that length of time. I usually wait 20 hours to put in cells or a replacement queen in a cage.
I have also heard about the queen cell method, and know a couple commercial fellows that use it almost exclusively. They do NOT look for the queens when they do splits, dont even care where they are. They poke the capped queen cells in both, or all splits and walk away.. the idea is, that a virgin queen will defeat a laying queen 98% of the time if the virgin emerges and they fight. By the same token, as long as there is a good laying queen in their hives they dont really care, so long as she makes bees.
As oldmech says, anytime within 24 hours. I wouldn't go much longer than that.
shucks idee i wait atleast a week, tear down the cells, kill every drone i see, then ad a frame with eggs, i dont want one of hers and they will shore try here to make one of her brood, and shore would pinch her head and smile doing it
Bud, you may have real africanized blood there. We don't here, just sometimes mean Italians with a little left over black german bee mixed in. My way works here, but may not if they have actual africanized blood.
As said often, beekeeping is very local.
naa idee ime lazy and when i get around to doing something finally go a litttle extra so i dont gota do it again and i get peed off when i gota go find a jacket to go into a bee yard
Murphy says I would miss a cell and she would be out in a week, laying just like her mama. Murphy has had my number for many years, and he don't miss no opportunity.
Requeening a hot hive:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm