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?