A sting on my hand (ouch)
A few more of the stings
Some of you will recall that I had to re-queen my very first hive. I now find myself in the same situation with vastly different circumstances. I had noticed that my local Maine bees were a bit more territorial than my Georgia package from last year. But over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that the area they are territorial about has expanded, And what I had originally labeled as activity during my most recent hive maintenance, I came to realize was aggression. I got stung far more this maintenance than normal, our dog Lucy got chased and stung (and chased some more) and I found 8 stingers in the phone we use to shoot our content.
You can see the yellow dots on the rim of the phone. Those are stingers.
As much as it pains me, the textbook response to hive aggression like this is to re-queen. I went out Monday and began the process by once again going through the hive, removing, and killing the queen. This is necessary because the queen is the mother of every bee in the hive. If there is a genetic disposition towards aggression, then providing a new queen will most likely correct that issue. We are now waiting 48 hours before introducing a new queen.
Off with her head!
This queen will be introduced to the hive inside of a small cage. Because she is unfamiliar to them, they would kill her if she were not protected. As happened last year, the hope is that the colony will accept her and eat through a fondant tunnel that will release her into the hive. If everything goes smoothly the new queen will start to lay eggs and we will see a new temperament in the hive in as little as three weeks.
Please keep your fingers crossed and your eyes peeled as we see how this will affect the disposition of the hive in the coming months.
~Chris, The Boxing Beekeeper
The ladies are aggressive. We knew that. But this is the type of aggression that has no place in urban beekeeping. We will have to kill the queen and re-queen the hive after this maintenance.