are hives that are raising a queen especially hot?

charles · June 20, 2009, 11:10:21 PM

I made a split a couple weeks ago. I checked later to make sure the new queenless hive was raising a new queen. I saw several open queen cups with larve, so all was well. I checked again today to see how they were coming along and they were so hot I couldn't even get into the brood box. Have any of you experienced extremely defensive behavior in a hive in mid queen-raising? What else might this hive need?

Brian D. Bray · June 20, 2009, 11:50:08 PM

Did you note any evidence of robbing. A split is naturally a weak hive and easy prey for other hives bent on robbing it. Robbing, besides making the home bees extremely defensive, can deplete it of stores and destroy any developing brood/queen cells. If robbing is occurring the aggressiveness will soon dwindle into listlessness.

Scadsobees · June 20, 2009, 11:53:55 PM

Queenless hives can be aggressive. Not necessarily as bad as you describe, but more irritable than usual.

charles · June 22, 2009, 10:13:50 AM

Quote from: Brian D. Bray on June 20, 2009, 11:50:08 PM
Did you note any evidence of robbing. a split is naturally a weak hive and easy prey for other hives bent on robbing it. Robbing, besides making the home bees extremely defensive, can deplete it of stores and destroy any developing brood/queen cells. If robbing is occurring the aggressiveness will soon dwindle into listlessness.

I did not see any robbing going on. I was able to see that their stores are still very high. I'm hoping that they will mellow down once they get their new layer. I did a full inspection of the parent hive that same day, and they were as gentle as could be.

Hethen57 · June 22, 2009, 11:15:22 AM

They are going to be more defensive because they are in "panic" mode.....you can often hear it in their "hummmm". If they were gentle before, they should settle down when they get things back in order.

Joelel · June 22, 2009, 01:13:41 PM

Quote from: charles on June 20, 2009, 11:10:21 PM
I made a split a couple weeks ago. I checked later to make sure the new queenless hive was raising a new queen. I saw several open queen cups with larve, so all was well. I checked again today to see how they were coming along and they were so hot I couldn't even get into the brood box. Have any of you experienced extremely defensive behavior in a hive in mid queen-raising? What else might this hive need?

Queenless bees are very defensive. Be sure to feed them sugar water or syrup.

charles · July 10, 2009, 12:04:33 AM

I inspected them on 7/3. They were very gentle. This tells me there was a queen emerged. I checked again today and found the queen and some eggs. I danced a little jig, marked her, and closed them up.

Yay.

beee farmer · July 10, 2009, 12:33:10 AM

Yeah, I am always alert to the loud "hum". You can almost count on the hive being in some state of queenlessness, wherther they are mid surpersdure, or as we have experiancing a lot this year in MS just plain queenless and no queen cells for no obvious reasons ie. no huge miteloads, no excess of SHB or anything.

Natalie · July 10, 2009, 12:41:45 AM

I had a queenless hive that was more aggressive than it had been, to the point where I did not even want to go into the vicinity of that particular hive.
They would meet me several feet away and I began to dread going near them.
They had rejected the queen I put in when I hived them.
I was able to get a queen cell from a breeder and put it in a couple of weeks ago and hoped for a change in their demeanor.
I checked on them today and I couldn't believe how gentle they were during the inspection, but sure enough there was a new queen walking around that I was lucky enough to spot and I also saw eggs.
They were happy little campers.
I figured if giving them a queen didn't change their attitudes at least it would change the genetics of the hive and the more aggressive ones would die off and the new ones would take over.
It turned out though that they were definitely more aggressive when they were queenless.