Implementing the Nasty Queen Replacement Plan

The first Problem

As a beginner beekeeper, my first problem is making a new Queen to replace the Nasty Queen.  

Any egg in a beehive can end up as a worker or a Drone or a Queen depending on the size of cell the egg is laid in and the food it is given.  Drones have noticeably larger cells that workers and Queen cells are so large they hang off the frame.  So, if a colony "loses" a Queen, the bees can construct an emergency Queen cell around an existing new egg to grow a replacement Queen.

There are lots of beekeeping techniques for making spare Queens and I must have read about most of them over the Winter.   I discussed options with other beekeepers and realised that everyone has their favourite foolproof method.    I decided that grafting queen cells and most other techniques sounded too complicated but I was more confident about setting up a nucleus hive with sealed brood, nurse bees, stores and a frame of eggs from my G Bee Queen and letting the bees do their own thing, so I decided to do that.  

Timing is everything.  I would need good weather for transferring a frame of G Bee Queen eggs safely into a nucleus.  Set up the nucleus too early and there aren't any Drones about for a newly hatched Queen to mate with.   The end of May is supposed to be the best time for Drones, so I had to count backwards from then to find the optimum time to start the process.   I took advantage of a beautiful day in April and put two frames of stores from the G Bees, two frames of sealed brood covered with bees from the Rubettes and one frame of eggs from the G Bees into a nucleus hive.  Any foragers that end up in the nucleus return to the main hive next time they fly out leaving the nurse bees to look after the sealed brood until it hatches.   By then the nurse bees and newly hatched workers all think the nucleus is their home so when they become foragers they return there.

A week later, quite a lot of the sealed brood in the nucleus had hatched and they had used one whole frame of stores.   I gave them another frame of stores to keep them going until they had enough foragers to bring their in their own stores.   I didn't inspect the frame that had been the G Bee egg frame for fear of it getting chilled but after another week, I found an empty Queen cell and when I closed up the nucleus, there were bees fanning on the landing board - normally a sign that there's a queen inside.  According to my beekeeper's rule (a sort of beekeeping slide rule that helps you work out how a colony is developing), it was entirely possible that a Queen had hatched in the last day or two so I might have an unmated Queen in there.

The Second Problem

Problem number two is finding and killing the Nasty Queen.  I didn't see the Nasty Queen during the whole of 2016.  This is partly because I didn't hang around looking at the Rubettes last season.   My objective in an inspection is to check for signs of the Queen (eggs, larvae and sealed brood), to check the colony is developing as expected and has space; to check they have adequate stores and to check for disease.   It isn't necessary to see the Queen if you can see signs of her. 

So at the very first inspection in March this year, I was astonished to see the Queen!!!!!!   The Nasty Queen is slim and black with a reddish brown tinge to her tail.   When I spotted her, I contemplated doing the deed but that would mean inspecting the Rubettes without fail each week to to make sure the colony weren't making a Queen from a Nasty Queen egg.  The weather is too unpredictable in March to be sure of being able to inspect the bees every week.    However, the main reason I didn't catch the Nasty Queen and commit reginicide was that I suddenly realised I didn't have enough hands to hold the frame and my hive tool and do something else at the same time.   

The next week feeling confident that I would shortly have a new Queen in the nucleus, I started to focus on finding the Nasty Queen.   I had just started the inspection when I realised, to my horror, that the zips on my veil weren't done up properly.  For a fleeting moment, as I calmly retreated away from the hive, I thought I might have got away with such a stupid error without the bees noticing but, that was when I heard the buzzing.  I had two stings, one on the back of the head and one on my forehead.   Luckily, P was on hand to scrape out the stings and find the oral antihistamine.  He also helped me finish the inspection but I spent the next 2 days looking like Melania Trump.    There are no photographs but having had this premonition, I will not be rushing to try the fashionable fillers and botox beauty treatment!   The Nasty Queen is still very much alive.

I now have two colonies of badly behaved bees!

Here's the thing.   The Rubettes are still the Rubettes.  The Nasty Queen is as productive as ever and it's a huge colony but the nucleus is also currently populated by bees that came from the Rubettes' hive.   They share the same characteristics as the Rubettes - pinging the veil and following me after an inspection so I now have 2 colonies of badly behaved bees!   

There is a small ray of hope.   At the last inspection of the nucleus, I saw lots of polished cells waiting for eggs to be laid in them and I think I saw the little elongated dots that are eggs in the bottom of some of them.   

Bad Beehaviour

What to do about a badly behaved colony

Over the course of last year, it became increasingly apparent I had one badly behaved colony of bees, one colony of angelic bees and a "normal" colony in the out apiary.   So what's the difference?

My G Bee colony, descendants of the rescue G Bees (see blog for July 2014) are every bit as well-behaved as the original G Bees bred by Mr Griffiths.   When I open them to do an inspection, they go about their business as if I am not there.   Visitors used to watch inspections from only a few feet away (albeit, the other side of the apiary hedge) and I regularly took off gloves to take photographs with my phone during an inspection.     The Sue Bees in the out apiary aren't quite so tranquil but they don't make much fuss during an inspection and nephew H helps Dad look after them.  The Rubettes distinguish themselves by their aggressive behaviour.   As soon as I lift the crown board I see them sticking their bottoms in the air to waft alarm pheromones to the rest of the colony.  Shortly after that the guard bees start pinging my veil.  They fly into the veil at about eye level and keep up this behaviour throughout the inspection.  The Rubettes have a habit of sitting on me and they regularly follow me back to the shed or even the house after an inspection.  This accounts for the lack of photographs last season - I wouldn't dare remove gloves in the apiary - and it's the reason we've made visitors stay well away from the apiary during inspections.

The photograph above was taken after my first inspection of the Rubettes back in 2015.  At the time this sitting on my back and head seemed almost affectionate but when they sit on your arms....and you bend at the elbow....they sting.   I've also been stung through the seam on my gloves where the leather joins the gauntlet.  

I reverted to using leather gloves last season for inspecting the Rubettes simply because they are thicker but I have gradually developed full battle dress for inspecting them.  This comprises my bee suit, wellington boots, two long sleeved T Shirts, a scarf around my neck, a cricket hat under the hood, nitrile gloves under washing up gloves under rubber bee keeping gloves with long gauntlets.

So, what to do?

I spent the latter part of last season and the Winter talking to other bee keepers and reading books eventually coming up with a plan that I thought I could implement to replace the Rubettes' Queen, aka the Nasty Queen. As all the bees in a colony are descendants of the Queen, they carry her genes.  Replace the Queen with a well-behaved Queen and after about 6 weeks, you should have a colony of well-behaved bees.  But will the theory work in practice?