Advice please - winter losses

[jeff33]

@NickM , you can say goodbye to your new queen in the bottom box. Introducing a new queen to an older angry workforce is a guaranteed death sentence regardless of the frame of emerging brood.

Personally I would cage the queen with a push in cage and in 5 days when there is no more viable larvae to raise a new queen, split them or do a vertical split with a 2 sided board.

If you split you can put a nuc where the hive was and add the frame with the queen (leave her caged). The rest is split in 2 nucs but leave them near the original site. Put a new queen in each, leave the tab on so they can't be released. This will give time for the flyers to go back to the original hive. Remove the tab after 36h.

The nuc with the old queen can either be dispatched or the queen killed and let them die off. In my apiary I would have killed the queen and shake the b#st#rds out but as it's in your garden, not an option.

I would go through this lengthy process because you are trying to introduce buckies which have not been laying for several days to feisty mongrels which have a habit to kill anything you give them!

 

[hemo]

One could try the honey dunk intro and make sure the new Queen is is slathered in honey and placed on the top bars, the bees will clean her up and then may accept her.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

you can say goodbye to your new queen in the bottom box. Introducing a new queen to an older angry workforce is a guaranteed death sentence regardless of the frame of emerging brood

you are dumping a new (alien) queen into a box of confused older foragers which are the most agressive component of a bee colony, I'd follow Jeff's advice and make up a nuc to introduce the queen to.

 

[NickM]

you are dumping a new (alien) queen into a box of confused older foragers which are the mpost agressive component of a bee colony, Id fo;;oe Jeff's advice and make up a nuc to introduce the queen to.

Thanks very much Jeff and JBM; I shall do just that.

 

[NickM]

Some feedback on requeening a nasty double-brood colony

After following advice above from Jeff and JBM I caged the nasty queen under a push in cage in the bottom brood box, and split the upper box into two smaller colonies, each of which received a mated queen from BMH. Then a week after that I went back into the lower brood box to nuc the queen and destroy any queen cells. Unfortunately she had escaped her cage and was running loose. It took me three sweeps to find her, not helped by angry bees pinging the veil, and by foragers coming in loaded with dandelion pollen (finding a red-marked queen when every frame was covered with moving reddish-orange dots made my eyes spin). Found her at last, introduced her to the hive-frame chest freezer, and a week later cut out all the emergency cells and put in a frame with eggs from my Good Queen. Today I found two open charged queen cells under construction on this frame, and I will select the better-looking of these in another couple of days. The angry colony is already calmer after the loss of her Evil Majesty, and both the BMH queens are accepted and laying.

So thank you very much for the advice - all seems promising at the moment!

 

[Wilco]

Some feedback on requeening a nasty double-brood colony

After following advice above from Jeff and JBM I caged the nasty queen under a push in cage in the bottom brood box, and split the upper box into two smaller colonies, each of which received a mated queen from BMH. Then a week after that I went back into the lower brood box to nuc the queen and destroy any queen cells. Unfortunately she had escaped her cage and was running loose. It took me three sweeps to find her, not helped by angry bees pinging the veil, and by foragers coming in loaded with dandelion pollen (finding a red-marked queen when every frame was covered with moving reddish-orange dots made my eyes spin). Found her at last, introduced her to the hive-frame chest freezer, and a week later cut out all the emergency cells and put in a frame with eggs from my Good Queen. Today I found two open charged queen cells under construction on this frame, and I will select the better-looking of these in another couple of days. The angry colony is already calmer after the loss of her Evil Majesty, and both the BMH queens are accepted and laying.

So thank you very much for the advice - all seems promising at the moment!

Well done.

 

[pargyle]

Some feedback on requeening a nasty double-brood colony

After following advice above from Jeff and JBM I caged the nasty queen under a push in cage in the bottom brood box, and split the upper box into two smaller colonies, each of which received a mated queen from BMH. Then a week after that I went back into the lower brood box to nuc the queen and destroy any queen cells. Unfortunately she had escaped her cage and was running loose. It took me three sweeps to find her, not helped by angry bees pinging the veil, and by foragers coming in loaded with dandelion pollen (finding a red-marked queen when every frame was covered with moving reddish-orange dots made my eyes spin). Found her at last, introduced her to the hive-frame chest freezer, and a week later cut out all the emergency cells and put in a frame with eggs from my Good Queen. Today I found two open charged queen cells under construction on this frame, and I will select the better-looking of these in another couple of days. The angry colony is already calmer after the loss of her Evil Majesty, and both the BMH queens are accepted and laying.

So thank you very much for the advice - all seems promising at the moment!

Well done ... it's never easy dealing with an excitable colony ... I've been plagued today in my allotment area (right next to my apiary) by a couple of over enthusiastic guard bees ... just a couple but they were annoying and pinging me .. I gave up in the end and put my jacket and veil on so that I could finish planting out my runners and french beans without worrying whether one of the little blighters was going to decide that kamikaze was required. However, if this behaviour continues I shall be following you down the path of requeening. I'm hoping it's just the fact that it's a colony that has been opened twice in three days and want to be left in peace - but - I'm not tolerating bees that won't let me near the hive without the guards getting defensive. End of ... I've told them the gatepost looms for her majesty if they don't behave.

It's a huge colony so I may well just split them and buy in another queen if it continues, I'm not a fan of pot luck queens in this area - some are really good but I know a few people who have some vile colonies from open mated queens - and they are not that far away from me ... and worse still - they tolerate them because they believe they are good honey producers !