Aggressive Bees

I was watching a TV show yesterday evening where Kate Humble and a beekeeper were pottering around a couple of hives and lifting supers un-gloved.Is this normal?

I typically walk away from any inspection with a dozen stingers in my gloves (I do smoke them), and on the few occasions where I've visited the hive uncovered I've walked away with three stings from four visits.

I have one colony of British black bees, do I need to look at swapping over to Buckfast if I want a more peaceful relationship.

PS - What happens if you introduce a non black bee queen to a black bee hive using the usual precautions? Would she be killed every time?

I garden, cut grass and wander round my hives in normal clothing with no protection as does mrs madasafish.
If you cannot do that, your bees are aggressive. (Been there, requeened them).

Gloves for beekeeping are for wusses

I have one colony that I used a digger right next to for hours but, now this is a big but! If i open them up, they are bloody awful! I will put I new Queen in this year though.

Beagle23 said:

I typically walk away from any inspection with a dozen stingers in my gloves (I do smoke them), and on the few occasions where I've visited the hive uncovered I've walked away with three stings from four visits.

I have one colony of British black bees, do I need to look at swapping over to Buckfast if I want a more peaceful relationship.

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They sound pretty aggressive to me. If you're smoking them and still being stung, that's completely unacceptable.
Have you actually thought about it and decided on "Buckfast" or is it just that you've heard of them (no offence intended...just trying to understand why you jumped from black to Buckfast)?

To a degree it will depend on the time of year, weather, nectar flows etc. I work entirely with AMM. I get a few stings during the course of the beekeeping year and they are generally on my fingers. When you lift frames, you can trap the odd bee between the lug and your fingers and she lets you know what you are doing by giving you a wee reminder.... I use nitrile gloves and these allow you to feel if there are bees in the way but you still get the odd wee jag. I can go to my colonies without gloves but it is quicker and easier to change a pair of nitriles in comparison to getting propolis etc off your bare hands. Also, I raely find the need to use smoke - when you have a lot of supers in place its use helps clear bees off top bars to allow you to replace the supers without squashing excessive numbers of bees.
If you are getting that many stings in your gloves , it suggests to me that you are using leather gloves and that the old stings in those gloves are acting as a marker/target every time you go back to the hive.
I had one stock in 2016 that got defensive when the OSR nectar flow ended and I was glad of a rugby top under my beesuit during two subsequent inspections. Taking off honey at this time did not help their attitude. Once other nectar sources became available to the colony, they were good to work with again.

Over the years I have managed to breed a nice quiet bee. I get the odd throw back which I have to weed out but generally try and produce stock from your quietest but proficient hives. I know you can't do that one hive so buy a known breed of queen in or beg a queen from a beekeeper with bees you can work with and go from there. I have had hives from hell in the past and sometimes bees will have bad hair days but generally you should be able to approach your bees with no stings and lift a frame from the hive without being pinged by more than about one or two max
In my perfect world anyway!
E

B+. said:

They sound pretty aggressive to me. If you're smoking them and still being stung, that's completely unacceptable.
Have you actually thought about it and decided on "Buckfast" or is it just that you've heard of them (no offence intended...just trying to understand why you jumped from black to Buckfast)?

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No offence taken. I'm basing it on something the guy I bought the bees from said to me about Black bees being the most aggressive breed and that I may want to move onto something like Buckfast.

i am a wimp and wear gloves as well, but if they is a stinger in the glove (might had had 3 last year from the 5 hives i have now) it's normaly due to me not noticing a bee on the frame where i am picking it up. The odd bee will ram the back of my head half way though a inspection.

The queens i have was from a carniolan stock (no idea how mixed they will be now)

Thanks for the replies. I'm quickly learning that the guidelines for beekeeping are anything but straight.



I'm going to stick with them for this year at least and see if they improve alongside my handling skills.

Beagle23 said:

No offence taken. I'm basing it on something the guy I bought the bees from said to me about Black bees being the most aggressive breed and that I may want to move onto something like Buckfast.

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Nothing Kate Bumble does could be considered normal!

Aggressiveness is a trait that can be displayed by any type of honey bee, most commonly (anecdotally) from a cross between Apis mellifera mellifera the native dark honey bee in the UK ( although often supplied by breeders outside of the UK) and either the A m carnica ( Carniolian) or A m ligustica ( Italian) sub species.
many years ago we kept the so called Buckfast hybrid type bees in and around Dorking.. not far from Chessington and when we had an aggressive or follower colony... we requeened it very quickly.

I think the beekeeper can have an influence on the temper of a colony as much as the lineage and type of bees kept.

Think ZEN and wellbeing and calmness... before you venture into the apiary

And ditch the thick leather gloves.... use them for pulling stinging nettles..
Get disposables or even Marrigolds and arm gauntlets if you must
wash and or replace very frequently ( and suits).... bees are possibly acting on alarm pherimone on your gloves
Yeghes da

In addition to other answers, aggressive - not aggresive is not black and white statement. it is often a sliding scale.

Bees can be grumpy due to the weather, invaders such as ants or wasps, the weather, rough handling, the curry you ate last night, the soap you washed with or a multitude of other reasons.

I score the bees on each visit (1-10). If they consistantly score on the high side, they will be dealt with.
Requeening large colonys can be hazardous (for the queen). I split mine down into NUC's and give each a new queen.
Conversely, trimming a very large colony down to a smaller size can also calm them regardless. I often split, but keep the queen in one of the NUC's. This often calms them right down until they get larger. If it does not, she is replaced.

I wouldn't like my bees to behave like that. It's supposed to be fun.

Beagle23 said:

I was watching a TV show yesterday evening where Kate Humble and a beekeeper were pottering around a couple of hives and lifting supers un-gloved.Is this normal?

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It's not unusual - much depends on the bee-type and 'knowing your bees'.

PS - What happens if you introduce a non black bee queen to a black bee hive using the usual precautions? Would she be killed every time?

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No. Sometimes re-queening with a different type can be a little more difficult - but you just need to be more careful. For example, if I'm re-queening with a valuable (purchased) queen then I wouldn't trust to luck with fondant-timed release, but use direct release instead having ensured that the queen had been fully accepted beforehand.

With regard to aggressiveness/over-defensiveness - not only do you NOT have to put up with that kind of behaviour, you're also adding an undesirable element to the local drone gene-pool by keeping such bees.

I also score hives (in the range 1 to 5) - all colonies start off as 3, and their behaviour rating increases or decreases by one at each assessment. As a rating of 1 indicates re-queening, all colonies are thus given at least one 'second chance' if they should behave crankily due to bad weather or suchlike.
Currently all my main hives are rated at 5, with a couple at 5* (five star), meaning they're exceptionally good and have been selected to raise queens from. The over-wintered nucs are yet to be assessed.
LJ

Little John said:

With regard to aggressiveness/over-defensiveness - not only do you NOT have to put up with that kind of behaviour, you're also adding an undesirable element to the local drone gene-pool by keeping such bees.
.
LJ

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Absolutely right! I wouldn't tolerate aggression.
On the subject of scoring, I think we all have different systems and, since this is the beginners section, I think its important to keep things simple.
The main thing to look for is whether the bees are stable on the comb. If not, do they fly up but don't sting? Are they manageable with smoke?
It sounds to me that the answer to all of these is: "No" so they should be requeened (for your good and your neighbours)

As for introducing a queen I have found that yellow bees will accept almost any queen fairly easily. Black bees won't unless it's another black queen. Only my experience, you understand.
If in doubt make a small nuc up and wait till she is laying then unite the two colonies.
You can use a push in cage but I have known bees get underneath them.

By hook or by crook my bees are getting Requeened this year, they are a nightmare, this will be my third season with the same Queen and i will be lucky if i can count on one hand the amount of times they have not tried to zap me during simple inspections, regardless of the weather it is not uncommon to have my gloves balled with bees or have them dinging of the face mesh trying to sting and i sometimes need to leave my veil on till i am well out of the way, i have two veils so one is always clean and my gloves are rubber which get washed regular, the poor dog even copped for it last year and she was over 30 yards away from the hive, wearing a cap under my veil and extra clothing in summer is something i would also like to avoid.
Re Queened they will be.

Time for a nice gentle Carni

Erichalfbee said:

Time for a nice gentle Carni

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Hopefully a good experienced fellow Forum member will be able to help me with calm Queens from calm bees when the timing is right.

Beagle23 said:

Thanks for the replies. I'm quickly learning that the guidelines for beekeeping are anything but straight.



I'm going to stick with them for this year at least and see if they improve alongside my handling skills.

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Good for you. There are many reasons for bees to become 'defensive'. It was your first year so you probably have quite a bit to learn.

Going through sample questions for my upcoming exam... One was about vicious colonies.

I thought a newbie (me included) just might need to learn good traits, ie. calm approach, no sudden movements, avoid opening hive in bad weather, don't wear strong aftershave, open aggressive hive first (no smell from other hives) etc. Ok, these may not sort out a vicious hive but it's worth trying these things first, is it not?