Angry Feral Bees

[Wandering Man]

As I write this I am playing the role of a sadistic psychopath.  I am torturing thousands of bees.  Causing them to slowly overheat and die.  I guess it is appropriate that I live in Victoria, Texas, the site of the death of 19 illegal immigrants who were locked in the back of an 18 wheeler that was abandoned by the driver in 2006.

3Reds and I captured the bees from a local cemetery on April 26.  The bees looked like they were doing pretty well in the nuc the first couple of times that we checked on them.  Last week we checked on them and it looked like they were producing lots of brood, storing pollen, but not storing much nectar.  We checked on them yesterday.  The bees got a little aggressive when we checked them, but they weren't stinging.  3Reds and I had a lot of bees following us, and it took finding a dark place to stand for them to finally retreat.  I thought they were grumpy because they didn't have much nectar, so we went back out and fed them some one to one syrup.

3Reds and I went back out this morning to add to the sugar water.  They came storming out of the nuc as soon as I removed the outer cover.  I took off the inner cover and 3Reds started pouring the syrup in.  She was worried that the bees were drowning but I was getting swarmed, so I advised her to not worry about the bees, we needed to get out of there.  3Reds said she looked at me and it looked like I was standing in the middle of a big black cloud.  I stung through my pants on the knee and then on my hand through my gloves.  After I closed the hive back up,  I walked to the far corners of the yard with bees still attacking me.  I stood between a shed and the neighbor's fence, which when bees usually leave me.  But I still had a pretty good swarm thumping me.  So, I walked back into the workshop with the lights out.  On the way to the workshop I noticed that one bee was inside the veil with me.  Fortunately, she seemed more interested in getting out than in stinging me.  It was like she had just got caught up in the excitement, realized what she had been doing, and now she wanted to distance herself from the mob.

I pulled 35 stingers out of my gloves.  There were a lot of stingers in my pants and quite a few in my bee jacket.

3Reds had one stinger in her glove.  That's all.  Just one. ?

Anyway, ironically I went to a new beekeeper's house after this to talk to him about some grumpy bees he had.  I was able to give him a detailed comparison between his bees and mine, and recommended he requeen.  I think his hive could still be saved.

Mine could not.  We live too close to other people to let these aggressive bees continue on their aggressive way for the 3 to 4 weeks it would take for a new queen (if we could even get them to accept a new queen) to start adding calmer bees into the mix.

So, I've stuffed a plastic bag in the entrance of the nuc, followed by a small towel, and covered with a couple of strips of duct tape. 

Our little weather station says it is 92 degrees outside / feels like 97.

I thought about that river that Jen is always talking about.  I wonder which is more cruel, drowning or over heating?

Here are a couple of pictures of the bees yesterday.  It was when 3Reds pulled out the frame in the second picture that all the aggression began:

[badly stung]

Looks like they were doing fine. Too bad they are so mean. Whats with the 1/2" hardware cloth on the first frame?

[Wandering Man]

Looks like they were doing fine. Too bad they are so mean. Whats with the 1/2" hardware cloth on the first frame?

This little tribe of bees had set up home in a irrigation box when we got it, and had already started building comb.  I used the hardware cloth to hang the comb from the top bar.  Some of the comb was too fresh, however, so we added the rubber bands.  It worked pretty well, so I'll make up a few more frames like this for our next colony capture.

I only had one frame made up, and this bit of comb got the rubber band treatment:


Notice the bees never quite grew the comb all the way to the top.  I was afraid they would chew through the rubber bands before the comb was securely attached.



The fact that it chose such a small space for its colony warned me that the bees could be Africanized, despite their calm demeanor when we captured them.  I may have jumped the gun in killing them, but I didn't think it was worth the risk to my dogs, neighbors or myself to wait.

3Reds and I have decided we will start requeening the bees we get from this location.

I'm now worried about a nuc that I sold a couple of weeks ago, although the buyer hasn't called me about them.

[LazyBkpr]

   I would take the hive apart. Shake the bees off and add the frames to other hives. Find the queen and end her reign, let the other bees find a new hive to join. They will be gone in a few weeks, and in the meantime they will strengthen the other hives.
  The heat will kill them, but it will also probably ruin the comb.
   Having said that....  I have been so angry at a hive that I closed it up, poured gas on it, lit it and walked away.   A friend of mine filled one with Acetylene and oxygen... stuffed toilet paper hanging from the entrance, lit it and ran...  he had to replace windows in his house when it went off. WOW what a boom.
   Aggressive hives are no fun to deal with. You do what you have to do!

[Wandering Man]

I should have asked first.

That might have been a better idea.  Standing in the swarm of angry bees didn't exactly promote my thinking ability.

The temp is 93 with a "feels like 103" right now.  We'll pull the telescoping cover off in a couple of hours and see what's left.  If the comb isn't melted in a puddle on the bottomboard, we'll put it in the freezer, and then add it to a couple of hives to let the bees clean out the larvae, pupae, and eggs.

[Bakersdozen]

WM, I was in the same situation.  I trapped a swarm, in a smaller box, last year.  They started out gentle but as time progressed they became meaner and meaner.  I found someone who wanted them, so I let him take them.  I couldn't even pull a frame out without a cloud of bees stinging and bumping me.  They had stung the neighbor who was trying to work in his yard.  That's when I knew they had to go.  Honestly, I didn't want those genetics being introduced to my other colonies.

[Nugget Shooter]

Feel for ya and had a similar situation as you already know, was able to reuse all frames and stores so not a total loos since there were 15 frames near fully drawn with stores. 

[Wandering Man]

With this nuc, there are only three frames with brood, pollen and a tiny dab of nectar.

We lifted the lid this evening, heard the roar of angry bees and slammed it shut before any of the girls got out.

I read about people complaining about killing their bees when moving them because the bees got overheated.  That's not happening here.  Not yet.  Of course, we've had some cloudy days with temps in the 80's in between the jumps to 90.  I guess it hasn't stayed hot enough long enough.  We had rain and temps drop to the mid 70's this afternoon. 

At this point, 3Reds says she doesn't want to try to find the queen to kill her and then do the shake out.  And we don't want to accidentally shake the queen into one of our calmer hives. 

She is also worried about the surviving bees continuing to be mean until they die their natural death.

I am in agreement with her regarding not doing the shake out. 

I don't know if she is right about the AHB's continuing to be ornery.

On a positive note, we've got the car loaded with bee equipment, and we are headed to Yorktown, Texas elementary school first thing in the morning to tell kids about the joys of beekeeping.

I'll try not tell them about having to put down a hive.

[Wandering Man]

After four days cooped up in nuc, we still have live angry bees!

We went after them with soapy water.  3Reds filled a large pan with soapy water, I filled a 2 gallon sprayer.  3Reds said she wanted to be the one to pour the gallon of soapy water into the hive.  In other words, she wanted to be the one to take care of the mass destruction, leaving me to spray survivors.

I opened the hive, and she poured.  Then I sprayed survivors.  Then she pulled out her hive tool and started smashing bees!  Blood lust?  Even she said she was surprised that she started doing that.   

I've decided this would be a good time to start sleeping with one eye open ...