I appreciate your response,I did purchase the hive with the queen
included,it was out of Alabama"Calvert Apiaries" it was a last minute
purchase do to my poor timing of being late and not able to purchase a hive
any where else. I did receive a phone call from Illinois Department Of
Agriculture this morning and they are not able at this time to come and
inspect my hive but they asked that I gather up a Hundred or so bees place
them in a container with alcohol and send them and they will find out if
they are africanized,But they feel they are not.I won't even express my
feelings of why they are not able to inspect the hive.But I will keep in
mind your process of the apistan strips.
 
Ted Fischer wrote:
 
> I read with interest this account of extremely aggressive bees.  I
> personally have never encountered anything like this in my 25 or so
> years with the bees, and am amazed that a hive would be this
> aggressive.  I assumed at first that Scott purchased a new package, but
> on rereading his post he really doesn't say where his original colony
> came from.  I am quite surprised that smoke didn't have a calming
> effect.  I wonder if many of you have read Kim Flottum's column in this
> month's Bee Culture magazine.  In it he describes his experience in
> working with an AHB colony in Texas.  He reports exactly the sort of
> bees that Scott has, although he took more precautions to guard against
> stings.  Dave Eyre also posted to this thread on the risk of getting AHB
> stock from breeders.
>
> Incidentally, on the related topic of introducing and removing Apistan
> strips, this is what I do to make my entry to the hive as non-intrusive
> as possible:  I put the strips in the lower of two hive bodies or the
> middle of three.  I crack the hive bodies without removing the cover or
> inner cover, blow in a short puff of smoke, then tip the upper hive body
> up from behind (pull it back an inch or so to keep it from sliding
> forward off the stack), and while balancing the upper HB with one hand I
> slip the prefolded Apistan strips in place or remove them with the other
> hand, then with another puff of smoke to send bees back between the
> frames, I gently lower the HB back into place.  It takes about a minute
> (maximum) per hive, with very minimal disruption. (However, I doubt if
> even this would have worked for Scott's hive.)