<<<<What can you do to make an excessively aggressive hive of bees more
docile?
 Out of 15 hives of bees and 30 years of keeping bees I can never remember
a
hive so aggressive.>>>>>
 
Being old and somewhat decrepit my memory is not what it was.  I think I
mentioned some time ago certain experiments carried out in the sixties.  
Briefly, stocks which were aggressive had their queens removed and replaced
with docile ones.  Within two days the stocks were docile.  Queens were
removed from docile colonies and replaced with queens from aggressive ones.
 Within two days the docile bees became aggressive. In a third experiment 
queens from aggressive stocks were placed in cages in docile stocks which 
immediately showed bad temper.  The conclusion was that the aggression was
not genetic but due to some physical fault in the queens' pheromones.
I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to try this for myself.  A friend had
a stock so aggressive life became unbearable for his family who could not 
enter the garden without being dive bombed and stung although the hives
were quite distant.  I invited him to bring the bees to me and I would
requeen them with a quiet queen of my own.  Because of the weight he split
the stock into two hives and brought them over one evening.  I placed them
right next to two of my strong stocks.  The result next day was dramatic.  
Whereas normally I could walk among my hives with no protection this time 
the bees came to meet me and their attitude was not friendly.  I wanted to
inspect one of my stocks but within minutes I was surrounded by angry bees
and before I could close down I had received some twenty stings on my
hands.  I left the bees alone for two days then during the afternoon with 
bees flying well I moved the two hives to other places in the apiary (a
large one with some eighteen hives).  This meant all the fliers came back 
and entered my hives. As they carried nectar or pollen they were well
received. Two days later I moved the hives again, thus losing another batch
of fliers, leaving me with two very weak stocks of young bees.  These were
much less aggressive and it was easy to find the queen and kill her and
destroy the emergency cells in the other half.  The bees and combs were
then placed over newspaper on one of my stocks.  According to those
experiments all would be peaceful after two days and it was so.  No
aggression anywhere in the apiary and I was able to requeen the stock with
no reaction at all.   
Finding the queen in a strong aggressive stock is very difficult and it is
necessary to reduce the number of bees in order to do so.  Splitting up the
stock and moving the parts around soon reduces them to the size of nuclei,
making the task easy.   
One cannot draw conclusions from a single example but what I did was quite
easy and all aggression had gone within a few days.  Perhaps others faced 
with this situation might try it out and report back.           Sid P.