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  • Requeening an angry hive without affecting this years crop!

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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #7750  by Bananas
 14 Jun 2020, 08:32
So I have an angry hive that attack me and are generally very unpleasant. However, the bees are bringin in loads of honey and the queen is laying really well.

Id like to requeen to get rid of the angriness but dont have a 'spare' queen and would like to create one from another smaller less angry hive I have. Trouble is I dont want to affect this years honey crop as far as possible. My plan was to create a nuc from some frames from the less angry hive and then transfer to the angry hive afterthe honey is extracted in early August with ideally a laying queen.

Im concious of getting close to winter so dont want to leave it too late but also dont want to do it too early to affect the honey.

Any advice on a good course of action?
 #7754  by AdamD
 14 Jun 2020, 10:59
Ask 5 beekeepers and get 6 answers. I'll give you two:-

Here's suggestion one. Carry out an artificial swarm with the decent colony. Reduce down to one queencell in the Q- part. At that point you could put some of the brood back to the queenright colony if you chose in order to keep it going. Once you have a mated queen, you have the opportunity to unite using newspaper to the angry hive, first removing the unwanted queen.

Second suggestion. Do an artificial swarm with the angry colony, leaving 4 or 5 frames of brood with the Q- part. Ideally there should be pollen too. Your angry colony will be depleted but will still be of a decent size. After a week, remove all queencells. By this time the Q- colony will have some nurse bees that will have emerged. Then place a frame of brood from the good colony into the Q- colony. Feed to help them produce food for feeding the queencells. (there will be few flyers in the Q- colony so they will need a little food-assistance). They will produce queencells from the donated frame of brood. Reduce to one Q/C. Allow queen to mate.