Feisty bee behaviour

[Trog]

To Marion: It may just be the weather, having looked at the pressure chart for today and yesterday. We were caught out by an un-forecast thunderstorm 2 hours after a not particularly enjoyable inspection a few weeks ago and more recently one colony was nervous the day before the sort of weather our area is experiencing today. They were AMMs and normally delightful to deal with but I picked up two stings within seconds of opening up. By contrast, the huge colony that normally has to be treated with great respect was pretty docile!

Are the new bees nearly filling the brood box? If so I'd super up with perhaps unwired foundation to see if they can give you a heather crop. Or, if you have some ready-drawn wired foundation, you can always scrape out any heather honey and sieve it!

[EmsE]

....If you confirm it is a drone layer I have in the past taken the whole hive a distance from the other hives and dumped all the bees out. The workers will fly back to the apairy to find their hive missing and will go to your other hives. In this way you can at least save some of the bees.
Has anybody other suggestions on how to deal with a drone laying colony

I did this last year to one of the colonies that had a drone layer in towards the end of the season. For some reason they all clustered on to one of the bricks that the hive was stood on.
The ones I found earlier in the year, I placed in a frame of worker eggs from another colony after removing the drone laying queen the day before. It did produce a good queen, although it did limp through the rest of the season and winter (I was convinced it wouldn't make it) probably due to lack of workers. If I need to do this again, I would provide extra sealed brood from another colony to give it a boost and a better chance.

[marion.orca]

I think my next course of action is to get a photo and post it, whilst at the same time looking for the Queen - [ my skills are not so good in that area ] , mark her if found, and put a super on at the same time. It would have to be wired foundation as opposed to unwired, but I don't mind having a good scrape for heather honey - should I be so lucky ! It did rain a couple of hours after I got home, but we didn't get a thunderstorm at all. It is also possible that I could do away with the Queen [ if found ! ] and bring a frame or two from my other colony, which is about 5 miles away. I'd hate to have to inspect them if they were permanently like that, not enjoyable at all.

[chris]

Back at the end of May, I inspected a colony that had capped drone brood all over the face of each comb,and a majority of drones in the hive.There were a couple of supercedure cells,nicely devloped, with a fat c2 inside.I could see eggs, but thought they could well be drone eggs. I found the 2 yr old queen. As I didn't know what was in the queen cells,(male or female) I added a frame with all 3 stages of brood, so the bees could make a new queen. On my next visit, I found a lovely Q cell in the middle of the added frame.Next visit, capped worker cells and fresh eggs. So the new queen had mated and was laying, although I couldn't find her. What I did find, was the original, marked queen

The colony is now doing really well, and my drone laying queen is still there.
And the behaviour of the bees, which had turned nastyish,is back to calm.
Ho hum.

[marion.orca]

Reading all of the above it tells me that the behaviour issue can indeed be rectified, so I will see what happens tomorrow - not a great forecast, dry, cloudy and a light northerly wind, but better than today. Lets hope I can find the Queen without having to call in anybody to help as the nearest association member who could, is about 30 miles away. I'm what you could call out on a limb a wee bit !

[EmsE]

Well, today all my colonies, except for a swarm I caught about a week ago were unhappy. They were fine for about 30 seconds after opening and then turned nasty- just after we spotted a wasp in there. Think that explains it in this case. Lovely sting on the wrist to remind me of their frame of mind. The entrance blocks are already on the small setting as it hasn't warmed up enough this year, but will need to find a way of narrowing them down a bit more.

[marion.orca]

Update on what I think may be a Drone laying Queen. On todays visit, the bees were marginally better tempered, but I can probably attribute that to the lovely sunny weather with a touch of breeze. I didn't spot the Queen [ probably need to shout for help with that ] though I did get some photos of frames. Yes there are clusters of drone cells at the edges, but also centrally. The colony was started on 07/05/12 with 2 frames of stores and 2 frames of BAS plus a new Queen. Since then all my records tell me that they have been very calm until 10/07/12 when they started to turn "feisty ". They are now on 8 frames and are drawing the last 2 outer frames. So why have they changed in the past month ? and have I indeed got a Drone laying Queen ? I added a super and Qex at the same visit. Here are the images.[ATTACH][ATTACH]Attachment 1127[/ATTACH][/ATTACH] - not sure if I have done that right, so hope you can view them.

[Jon]

Most of the brood in the pictures is normal worker brood.
Unless they have a couple of frames where they can make drones they will try and squeeze in drone brood wherever they can at edges and gaps.

[EmsE]

Hi Marion,

You mentioned that they were now prolific, do you feel they could have been short on bee space? If so, then adding the super will certainly help and hopefully your next visit will be better.

As there is plenty of worker brood i wouldn't worry about her being a drone layer.

[marion.orca]

Thanks for the replies. I don't think they have been short of space as they had 6 spare to start off with [ 2 now ]. Would it be wise then to cull some of the drone brood [ as I've read elsewhere on the forum ] or wise to just leave well alone and let them be. Or perhaps a second brood box under the super ? Not really been a great start since I began last year in July, but hey ho, not giving up just yet, so that's a good sign !