In a message dated 02/09/98 04:31:10 GMT, Catherine Duffy wrote:
 
<<  14. Bad tempered Colony : how to handle; how to requeen >>
I agree with what Tom Cornick says about working a bad tempered hive.
However, if I may make a rashly sexist assumption that being of the female
persuasion you may not relish the prospect of carrying a heavy hive 30 yards
there are other things you can do.
Give a light feed the evening before working them.  Smoke doesn't work as
effectively if there are no open stores for the bees to engorge.  Use plenty
of smoke and a water spray. Use cover cloths so only one comb is exposed at a
time.  Alternatively don't use cover cloths but expose the whole brood nest
and go away for half an hour.  Exposure to the light has a calming efect on
some strains - they are all different.  You don't often have to examine every
frame.  Before opening a hive ask yourself "Why am I here?  What MUST I do?"
Then do it calmly and quickly and go away. With the right reading and some
experience you can get a reasonable idea what's happening inside a hive from
what's happening outside.
To requeen the bad tempered colony first obtain, locally if at all possible, a
queen known to produce good tempered workers.  Install her in a nucleus placed
next to the bad tempered one.  If necessary the nuc can be made up from the
other one as long as enough extra bees are shaken in to compensate for those
which fly straight home.  Wait until the new queen has settled down and is
laying well.  Swap the positions of the two hives on a sunny day.  All the
flying bees and those which have orientated to the old position will join the
nuc.  The new queen may well have a calming influence at once probably due to
greater queen substance pheromones  in a younger queen.  In a day or two go
through the old hive which will be depleted in numbers and you should easily
find and kill the queen.  Shake off the bees and add the brood combs to the
nuc.
Chris Slade