My Requeening strategy - Am I crazy?

[BeauC]

Hello Everyone:

I am getting ready to requeen a very agressive hive with a new queen.  I have a strategy that I've never seen in the books, but I think it might work.

1. Move the brood up to the top of the hive (I feel sure the queen is there).
2. Put a Bee Escape below the brood, to slowly empty the brood.
3. Put a Queen excluder below the Bee Escape, so that the Queen will be able to leave the brood, and she can go through the Bee Escape?, but won't be able to get through the Queen excluder.
4. Put another Bee Ecape below the Queen Excluder, so that I will be able to remove the empty brood, find and kill the queen without the bees coming out of the hive.
5. Put a fume board on top of the Brood, which should force all the bees out of the brood.
6. After a few hours, find the queen stuck between the Queen Excluder and the Bee Escape, kill her, and then introduce the new queen the next day.

Also, I want to do all of this at night, since the agressive bees won't sting me so badly in the dark (I hope).

I know this sounds extreme, but these bees are very mean (not like the rest of my hives), so I assume that they are Africanized (I live in Texas, where the Africans Bees live). The thought of searching frame by frame for the queen while thousands of African bees try to kill me is not a fun thought.

Anyway, any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,
Beau

[Finsky]

Hello Everyone:

I am getting ready to requeen a very agressive hive with a new queen.


Also, I want to do all of this at night, since the agressive bees won't sting me so badly in the dark (I hope).

First, nigth or evening is worst choice you can find. Even nice hive will get stungs and bees run everywhere.

You trick: If you do that who feed larvae?

If hive is mad, move it 10 feet away and put empty hive in old site. Put frame of brood in new hive.

During 2 days most bees fly into new hive . Youngest will remain in old hive and they are not so bad. Those who move are oldest and  have worst temperature.

When in old hive you have less bees it is easier to find the queen.

If you do not find the queen easily and bees are nervous, devide hive with excluder. After 3 days again you may see, where are youngest bees and where queen is laying eggs.

Often bees want to raise it's own queen and they do not accept your queen. But after 6 days emerge queen cells  have capped and then they accept what new queen easily.  

When you have that new hive and one brood frame, you just take brood frame away after one week and give that new queen. They are not able to raise new queen any more.

The most diffucult part in this case is that bees attach and they became more furious when poison smells. There is no much time to search queen. In the evening some hives have meaning of killing (bears time!).

[Robo]

Although it seems it would work on paper, I have my doubts.  There are a few assumptions you may be overlooking.

1.  That a fume board will drive the queen from the brood.  It is very difficult to get the queen to leave the brood area.  I know a few beekeepers who have unsuccessfully tried to drive the ferel queen out of walls in an effort to not have to do any structural removal.

2.  Even if you can drive the queen out, you assume that a queen can't go thru an excluder.  If the fumes are strong enough to push her from the brood, she probably ain't stopping at the excluder.  Read this post
http://www.beemaster.com/beebbs/viewtopic.php?t=4681

I agree with Finsky,  split the hive into smaller, more managable units is the best way to go.

[Michael Bush]

Finsky is giving you good advice.  If you want to calm them down more, then put the boxes on their own top and bottom so each box is a "hive".  With the field bees back at the old location (as Finsky described) you now have not more than one box of nurse bees to contend with at a time.

[ian michael davison]

Hi all
DON'T DO IT AT NIGHT. You will be covered in crawling rather angry bees!!!!!!!!!!!! They also have a habbit of crawling through any gap in your suit.

Swap the large hive for a nuc(IN A LARGE BOX) if you can and fly off a large proportion of the older bees before requeening or going through the hive.


Regards Ian

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm

[Dale]

I agree with all.  At night would be your worst choice, because everybody is at home!  The older ones a the nasty ones.

    I learned  a long time ago, to solve a problem, the best thing to do is break it in half if you can.  By splitting off the hives, that is exactly what you are doing.  Personally, I'd take my chances, and go right after the queen, since you already have it open.  Go right to the fresh eggs and larvae, and the queen should be close by.  Find her, kill her, and get out!  I would actually wait a day, before putting the replacement in anyway. That, theoretically should be easy.  Then you wait at least a month to see what happens.

    Out of curiosity, was this a carniolian cross, first generation?

[shavo]

man i don't know much but the first thing the bee man who sold me my stuff said was don't mess with em' at night or in the rain!

[Michael Bush]

I raise queens and had to setup a cell starter yesterday.  In the rain.  Makes me appreciate nice bees.  

[Summerbee]

Although everybody's already said it, don't mess with bees at night!!!

When I bought my beehive, I picked it up in the wee hours of the morning,andthe bkpr I bought it from covered the entrance the night before (in order to get all of the bees when they were home).  The entrance was stuffed with tissues and sealed with ducttape.  It was about 6:30am when I had them set up in the pasture, and although the sun was minutely peeking over the East, it was still dark.  I thought to myself 'oh, the poor bees, I don't want them to be cooped up all day until I get back in the afternoon".  So, I ripped off the ducttape (mistake #1, bees don't like sudden movements), pulled out the kleenex(mistake #2, bees were still clinging to it), and stood there(mistake #3 - I hung around for the results!).

I liken the bees that came careening out of that hive to kamaikazee pilots.  The dog ran for it, a nearby chicken flew into a tree, and I was off like a shot.  Needless to say, I left them alone for a few days before venturing near them within, oh, 50 ft.   But now we get along nicely, and I leave them be between 8 and 8.