some things are just meant to bee

[Jen]

Me too Neil! And ya know what? Just ask Riverbee about bats... 

[rober]

what can I say. I just ain't been right in the head since they let me out of that nervous hospital mmm-mm.

[riverbee]

rober, if you have knob and tube wiring, at some point a fire will start with or without the help of a squirrel or other critter.
i speak as an experienced retired fire investigator.

about bats jen, sometimes flying critters (and others) take advantage of our neglect and what we fail to do in our older homes/farmhouses to keep them out, and we pay the price.

we are off topic, lets get back to being on topic. 

the subject is about rober's aggressive bees and queen, and not about other extraneous indiscriminate killing of animals for whatever benefit or the benefit of others or for whatever reason or 'sport' a member may enjoy.

here we try not to engage in these conversations because it invokes too much controversy.

what brings us here to this forum is bees. we all come from many different backgrounds and all have many interests, and we share them and many other stories of our experiences.

let's move on and get back to the original topic.

[rober]

5 queens arrived on Thursday morning I put 4 in splits right away but the weather turned so the last queen had to wait. Friday morning I arrived at the mean hive's yard & suited up .a long sleeve shirt under my jacket, rubber at the top of my gloves, Velcro straps on my pants legs, & 2 bungy cords around the bottom of my jacket. twas a good thing too. the hive was beyond cranky. started going thru frame by frame looking for queen cells. 2 frames in the top box had queen cells. there were also 2 frames with what looked like swarm cells in the bottom box. because there were so many queen cells with a chance of them making more I decided not to risk the new queen & left them a frame with 2 sealed queen cells to make their own queen. I shook a lot of bees into a cardboard nuc box & went to a another yard & made up 2 nucs with the swarm cell frames, & 1 nuc with the new queen. a few things i'm wondering about. 1st-since the cells were from that queen there's a chance the cells will produce cranky hives. hopefully the drones  genetics have a good influence. I had a cell from gentle queen produce the meanest hive I ever encountered when cells from the same queen produced gentle hives so the drones had to be the determining factor.  2nd-i've never seen a queenless hive produce swarm cells. 3rd-the bees that I shook out to make the split were still cranky but were a bit calmer at the new location. it's a shame that queen was so mean as she was an egg laying machine. this the 2nd time that I've had extremely productive queens that were produced mean hives. once I was properly dressed working the hive was stressful but doable. both times it was at this same yard which is on a farm. i'm thinking that if it should happen again I might just leave them bee. there's no one around for them to bother & that 1st mean hive made a lot of honey. I don't think the crankiness was temporary. I think that queen got into a layer of sperm from another drone that produced mean bees. I had a minimum of 1000 stingers in my clothes by the time i'd finished.

[tedh]

I've heard a local keep say that mean bees make more honey.  Last summer the bees here at my house were REALLY aggressive, not defensive AGGRESSIVE!  They'd hunt me down 100 yds away, while working on my shack, and sting without trying to bump or drive me off first.  They were like heat seeking missiles!  Those hives, 4 of them, produced the bulk of our honey.  Good luck Rober, mean bees are unfun to work with or work around.  Ted

[Bakersdozen]

a few things i'm wondering about. 1st-since the cells were from that queen there's a chance the cells will produce cranky hives. hopefully the drones  genetics have a good influence. I had a cell from gentle queen produce the meanest hive I ever encountered when cells from the same queen produced gentle hives so the drones had to be the determining factor.  2nd-i've never seen a queenless hive produce swarm cells. 3rd-the bees that I shook out to make the split were still cranky but were a bit calmer at the new location. it's a shame that queen was so mean as she was an egg laying machine.  i'm thinking that if it should happen again I might just leave them bee. there's no one around for them to bother & that 1st mean hive made a lot of honey. I don't think the crankiness was temporary. I think that queen got into a layer of sperm from another drone that produced mean bee.

1. That was my first thought.  Mean mamas can make mean daughters.
2. A queenless hive might have produced a cell from an older egg that has not been treated "royally".  The queen cell may contain and inferior queen.  The original queen might have died or she swarmed with a small group of workers.
3.  The divide and conquer method does help tone down the hostility. 
4.  "I'm thinking that if it should happen again I might just leave them bee."  That is another option since they are isolated.  If they swarm the mean genes will swarm with them.  Just putting honey supers on them is an option.  Dressing very well when it comes time to pull the supers is another story.  I had a colony like that last year.  It had been a swarm the previous year that I caught in a swarm box.  That was my plan until the neighbor got chased out of his own back yard.  They found a home in the country where another beekeeper did the divide and conquer method.
It seems cranky heavy populated colonies are the honey producers.  I also found that the honey producers like that are the ones that will crash from mites at some point in the fall.

[rober]

if these queen cells make mean bees as an experiment i'll move them back to that farm, dress appropiately when working them & resign myself to driving off in my beesuit.

[flint1]

Sorry, but this thread is just too too, funny. I'm rolling reading this one.  Rober, you and I have a lot in common, rendezvous, hunting, trapping, skinning and of course the bees.  glad you came out of it ok.