aggressive bees?

Patrick · April 18, 2009, 12:03:35 AM

Last December I had a tiny swarm fly into an empty hive and set up shop. They are doing well and in no time have filled out 2 deeps and 2 honey supers. My plan was to re queen in April in case the bees were hard to handle. Well, after two prolonged attempts to find to old gal.. I got nothing. She is in there eggs all over the place ,but I can't find her. My question is this..after breaking down the hives twice and spending about an hour or more looking for her. The bees are not so bad to work with. They are certainly more aggressive that my purchased bees but, considering I had the hive broken down and allover the yard for an hour and two days in a row really not that bad. A few stings in the gloves from handling a crowded hive and a lot of flying into my face/veil and then there were two or three bees that would not quit for an hour or so after I closed every thing up. Are these bees going to get more and more aggressive as the season wears on? or am I seeing them at there spring peak and full force now? Do I make another attempt to find the queen or just live with these otherwise pretty good bees? I ask because generally my purchased bees get a bit cranky in late August when it is hot here and not much food to get and this is the first time I have had a swarm with an unknown queen.
Opinions?
Cheers.
Patrick

Kathyp · April 18, 2009, 12:09:55 AM

i'd leave her and not bother looking for her as long as eggs/young larvae are there. IMHO finding a queen just to say you found her is very over-rated :-)

wxton · April 18, 2009, 01:23:45 AM

I am very new at this so take this with a grain of salt. I am trying to re-queen my hives this year just because I want to install the traits of the new queens. I had a hard time trying to find them and actually came to the conclusion that my hives were queenless. I will find out in a few days if my assumption was right or not. That being said, if the bees from the swarm you have are suiting you then don't try and re-queen. You say that they are more aggressive than what you are used to, this might be a reason to re-queen. That is the reason I wanted to re-queen. I think my purchased queens were superceded and I wanted to re-queen them to calm the aggression down in my own hives. If this is the reason you are wanting to re-queen (to calm your hive down) then you might want to put a known (a queen with known traits) in your hive.

Just my two cents and there is no fact behind anything I have said and not much experience to back it up with! Just my opinion...for what it is worth.

RayMarler · April 18, 2009, 01:39:04 AM

Sometimes the slightly aggressive bees are better honey producers, from what I've heard from others.

This hive will get hotter in August when there is no nectar flows and the population has built up to full force. There'll be a lot of field bees with nothing to forage so they'll all be there protecting the hive. If you can live with the aggressiveness, then keep her, if not, then re-queen. It's really up to you.

I live in an area with neighbors so I tend to keep my hives with gentle bees. I do use pine needle smoke to work them and they are always quite calm. If they ever get very aggressive then I re-queen. That's just my operations, what I need and do.

dpence · April 18, 2009, 02:02:04 AM

Quote from: RayMarler on April 18, 2009, 01:39:04 AM
Sometimes the slightly aggressive bees are better honey producers, from what I've heard from others.

I agree. In my opinion if the queen is laying and brood pattern is good, I can deal with the behavior.

Also one thing I learned from here is when you replace a queen, put the old queen in a nuc, just in case your new queen doesn't pan out.

David

JP · April 18, 2009, 04:20:47 AM

As Ray mentioned, they most likely will get even more aggressive come summer, when you have no nectar flow and the hive is bigger than it is now.

I agree that big hives that perhaps are a little more aggresive than you would like them to be are in fact better producers.

Now here's another possibility, if said queen is superseded, the new queen once mated could possibly produce even meaner bees or nicer bees.

You are in an area that has a good bit of AHBs. Consider marking your queens. This may enable you to find your queens better and it also will let you know if the marked queen has been superseded.

...JP

Patrick · April 18, 2009, 01:11:19 PM

Thanks for all the feed back guys and gals. I would like to re-queen but finding that unmarked lady is rough. So far Bees 2 Beekeeper 0 . :-x
I have read before that you want to keep visits to the hive short. Of course when you are looking for a queen in a large hive it can take awhile but when is too much. Is it a good idea for me to go out there and break the hive down day after day until I find her? Should I give them a rest? Or maybe it does not matter? Might they feel that they are being molested too much and take off?

(maybe queen spotting should be an Olympic sport, or at least a featured competition at the Beemasters hoedown)

tct1w · April 18, 2009, 11:51:05 PM

I have a hot hive and have never been able to find the queen. I finally gave up. Also as someone mentioned I have heard they are the best producers. That hive is massive so will let her go through the summer but will requeen this fall. Will have to find her then. Take Care Dave

JP · April 19, 2009, 12:09:05 AM

Quote from: Patrick on April 18, 2009, 01:11:19 PM
Thanks for all the feed back guys and gals. I would like to re-queen but finding that unmarked lady is rough. So far Bees 2 Beekeeper 0 . :-x
I have read before that you want to keep visits to the hive short. Of course when you are looking for a queen in a large hive it can take awhile but when is too much. Is it a good idea for me to go out there and break the hive down day after day until I find her? Should I give them a rest? Or maybe it does not matter? Might they feel that they are being molested too much and take off?

(maybe queen spotting should be an Olympic sport, or at least a featured competition at the Beemasters hoedown)

Read this http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm

...JP

heaflaw · April 19, 2009, 12:47:52 AM

I am in the process of requeening an aggressive hive right now. They have always been good producers but as soon as I opened the inner cover about 30 would fly at my face. I never looked deeper into the hive and I always dreaded robbing them. They would even come after me if I was working a nearby hive. I got tired of the trouble. I took a frame of eggs/young larva from my best hive today and made a new hive. I added three frames of honey/pollen with bees from the aggressive hive and also shook bees off of a couple of other frames from the hive. I was wearing full body armor and still was stung a few times lightly thru leather gloves. It helped that the aggressive hive was not as strong as most years. Maybe the queen is getting old. In the process, I saw the queen. I hope that once the new hive makes a new queen and she is mated, that I can find the mean queen and kill her. Then I can combine and should have a great hive.

Comments to my technique appreciated.

JP · April 19, 2009, 12:54:15 AM

Heaflaw, I don't know if I'm following you correctly. You took brood with eggs and young larvae from a nice hive and then took honey frames from the mean hive and bees from that hive and created a nuc?

...JP

heaflaw · April 19, 2009, 01:40:02 AM

JP, yes exactly. I probably didn't explain well. When the Nuc has a newly mated queen, I will kill the queen in the old mean hive, wait a day or two and combine the nuc with the mean hive. They should combine without problems since most of the bees in the nuc were from the mean hive originally. By that time the combination should make a strong hive and 6 weeks later should be gentle.

Kathyp · April 19, 2009, 02:57:17 AM

hey...after i told you to leave her alone (suck it up), i went out to one of my hives that i have kind of neglected, and got the living snot stung out of me. if i hadn't been running and cussing, i'd have been squishing that queen without problem.!!!!!! it was temporary. they were fine later in the day and she's an awesome layer. she lives for now.

so....knock her off if it makes you feel better and makes the hive easier. :evil:

metzelplex · April 19, 2009, 03:04:40 AM

hello patrick if you want to requeen for gentler bees you might want to divide the brood between the top and bottom box then make a divide by putting the top box on its own bottom board and moving it to another yard so that the older field bees wont go back to the original box then in three days go and look to see which box has queen cells the one without the queen cells has the queen then you cut out the queen cells and put in your queen of choice and now you know the queen is in the other box now you only have to tear apart one box instead of two plus only half the bees then wait till about mid morning when all the field bees are out and you'll have even less bees to look through when you find her you can get rid of her and combine the two boxes with newspaper or replace her with a new queen . hope this helps. metzelplex

SgtMaj · April 19, 2009, 03:10:29 AM

Patrick,

I would call your hive hot. Unless you're absolutely man-handling them, you shouldn't have any stings in the gloves in my opinion. Knock on wood, so far I've only recieved two stings in me, or on any clothing so far. Both that I did get were my fault. I sometimes fluster one of the girls to the point that she pings my veil for a few minutes, but that's about it... and that's without smoke. As a suburbia backyard (or in my case a sideyard and frontyard) beekeeper and not a commercial beekeeper, I would call it a need for me to keep my bees gentle. So far they have been, and I don't even have to worry if I need to mow the lawn in front of the hives... though I do expect them to get a little testy once the summer dearth hits. But this time of year, especially with the flow starting, they should be like kittens.

As far as finding stuff during inspections, I used the camera more than my eyes during the last inspection I did, and found more than my eyes possibly could have found on their own. Snap a couple quick pictures of each frame while you have it out... then close up the hive and take all the time in the world to review the footage. I'll never do an inspection without my camera again.

Oh, going back to the aggressiveness bit, I read somewhere that bees can recognize human faces. I'm not sure how true that is, but whenever I do anything to the hive I make sure I show them my face, say "hello, girls" and give them a treat (usually a little bit of honey I took from the hive). I don't know if it helps or if I'm just being foolish, but I do think that if bees really can recognize faces, then I also think they would also be capable of remembering a person as either a threat or non-threat to the hive and respond accordingly. For that reason I also plan to disguise my face for the harvest this year. Like I said, I'm probably just being foolish, but until one of my hives turns mean, I'm going to say it works.

SgtMaj · April 19, 2009, 03:31:31 AM

PS - With all the trouble you've had finding the queen, consider marking the next one before putting her in. :-D

Patrick · April 20, 2009, 06:07:11 PM

Thanks again for all the feedback guys and gals. The third time was a charm, as the law of averages were on my side. I found her on the 4th frame I pulled.
Kirk-o had a great suggestion on how to find a queen in a big hive that I will use in the future. Basically you put a few frames of brood with not queen in a hard bottom box with no exit then a queen excluder then an other deep. Then you can methodically search and then brush the bees into the box. The workers will pass through the excluder and go for the brood and if you have missed the queen she will be on the excluder. I was all set up to try this but then I spotted her, but it seems like a good method.
Cheers,
Patrick