The time has come to implement part 2 of the nasty Queen Replacement Plan
As we approach the end of the season, the time has come to implement part 2 of the Nasty Queen replacement plan which involves finally finding and killing the Nasty Queen and then uniting the colony with the new colony headed by Queenie, the new Queen raised this year from a G Bee Queen egg.
Last week, I visited Bob at the bee shop to buy the Varroa treatment that I will need soon and, as usual, I got a lesson from him - this time on how to find and kill a problem queen.
Bob recommended putting on every piece of protective clothing I have, dismantling the hive and taking the brood box well away from the apiary then inspecting each frame and shaking off surplus bees onto grass in order to find the queen. This process should be repeated again and again until the queen was found, then she could be stamped on. The hive could be reassembled on its usual stand in the apiary so that all the bees would return home. Finally, the colony could be united with another colony in the usual way, or alternatively, a frame of new eggs from a from another colony could be inserted for the bees to raise a new queen.
My regular outfit for inspecting the Nast Queen colony is jeans and a long sleeved T Shirt, scarf round my neck, disposable nitrile gloves under washing up gloves under long beekeeping gloves, cricket hat, beekeeping suit and wellies. It gets hot!
No sign of the queen
As I can't lift a full brood chamber easily, I used a nucleus box to move a few frames at a time as far away from the apiary as possible.
I carefully inspected all the frames and couldn't find the Nasty Queen.
I shook off surplus bees but there was no sign of the queen.
I returned the frames to a new brood chamber and repeated the process until the old brood chamber was empty and the new brood chamber was back on the stand. There was still no sign of the queen but there were a lot of bees on the grass at the bottom of the garden.
The weather forecast was for showers so I put a cover board against the hedge so the bees still on the grass had somewhere to shelter in case they couldn't get back to the hive.
Next day, with better weather, I repeated the process. I found an empty queen cell on one of the frames in the brood chamber. (Could they really create a queen cell so quickly or did I miss it the day before? ) I still didn't find the queen.
There was a group of bees that had spent the night by the hedge and their demeanour made me think it was likely that the queen was amongst them. I consulted Dad and he suggested shaking the bees onto a sloping sheet, placing the skep on it and watching the bees march into the skep. He said I would see the queen running over the other bees to get in the skep. I've heard of this process for getting bees into a hive but I haven't observed myself.
this was the point when I belatedly realised that I wasn't sure I could kill her even if I spotted her
It was fascinating to see the bees send out scouts in all directions to the edge of the sheet looking for somewhere suitable to congregate. They returned to the main mass of bees and I saw wiggle dances. After a few minutes, a few bees moved slowly into the skep, then others followed them and then there were two rivers of bees running purposefully and swiftly into the skep. I couldn't see the queen but this was the point when I belatedly realised that I wasn't sure I could kill her even if I spotted her. Perhaps that was why I hadn't found her since March. Perhaps subconsciously I didn't want to find her because I couldn't actually kill her. Absolutely convinced that I couldn't stamp on her, I picked up half a brick and carried on watching the bees. I was feeling a total failure as a beekeeper because I couldn't even spot a queen bee on a white sheet.
When about three quarters of the bees had moved into the skep, suddenly I saw her. She looked fatter than I remembered but there was no doubt it was the queen and not a drone. She was running alone up the middle of the sheet between the two main rivers of running bees. Without hesitation I put the brick on her and then stood on it, massively relieved that there were no other bee casualties.
The rest of the bees eventually made their way into the skep. It may be my imagination but they were quivering and looked lost. In the evening, I put their brood chamber with the bees that were still in it onto the new colony and shook the bees from the skep into the brood chamber. The blog from 31 August 2015 explains the process for uniting two colonies of bees. I'll leave them alone for a week and hope they are happier when they realise that they are in Queenie's colony.
The final act (I hope) of the Nasty colony was to sting P when he arrived home from cricket. He wasn't near the apiary but a bee got behind his glasses. Bob says he doesn't mind follower bees but he doesn't like greeters. P was met by a greeter.
The Nasty Queen had to go.
