Tim Arheit wrote:

> I wonder how many colonies are destroyed or requeened because of one
> incident of aggression?
snip
>I've almost always been able to find a reason for their bad
> temper, or in cases where I don't find one it passes in a few
> days.  Clearly not just case of  a bad tempered breeding.

I think in this case it may have been good PR to destroy the bees, but
that is second guessing. From what I was able to guess, based on the
weather we had in New England at the time, he was working his bees in
cool, overcast weather, which means they were all there and not
foraging, not a good time to work them.

But the bees were still aggressive the next day. Granted, that is not
enough time to get a good look at their normal state, but they may have
been a mean colony. And it could have been skunks, a dropped box,
whatever. We will never know.

As far as bad tempered bees, many years ago I bought a package of
Italians that were mean from the time I hived them until I finally got
rid of the queen. They would hit me when I was working im my garden, a
good 250 feet from the hives.

I was a bit new to requeening, so I tried to find her and failed in
several attempts. I was fully dressed and they were hitting my plastic
hat like rain on a tin roof. Quite distracting. So I called a very
experienced beekeeper. He and another expert came over to find the
queen. He only put on his veil and the other nothing. In fact he had a
cutaway shirt, so lots of bare flesh was showing. They laughed as I got
fully suited up. Within two minutes I was asked to go to his truck and
bring gloves and suit while the other beekeeper moved to safer ground.

The interesting thing was that when he was looking for the queen, I was
standing on the opposite side of the frames and spotted her. It appeared
that she moved quickly to the lower side of the frame, so got out of
sight quickly. Requeened with Carneolean and aggression dropped
dramatically.

So you can have aggressive colonies that have nothing to do with skunks
and the like. There have been many testimonials to that fact here on the
BeeL.

As an aside. I grow my own with splits. I was told when I first started
this that I would have aggressive bees fairly soon since that is what
happened from raising from splits. The bees I have now are about the
most gentle I have ever had and this is my seventh year of raising
queens from splits. The most aggressive bees I ever had was that package
of Italians I bought from a commercial breeder in the South.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME