Feisty bee behaviour

[EmsE]

I went to see 2 of my colonies today with HJBee in the lovely warm, dry weather. As there is a good flow on at the moment, the hawthorn is out and the horse chestnut is now flowering and the rest, I was expecting all to be well with the bees, but 1 colony had other ideas :(

The hive received its usual gentle puffs of smoke at the entrance, supers removed and the double brood box separated so we could go through the bottom box. 2nd frame in and everything had to come to a halt as the bees began behaving badly resulting in someone being stung outside the apiary ( they were aware that we were opening the hives) We closed the hive back up, left the apiary and waited at least 20 minutes for the bees to leave us alone, but they continued to try and get in the bee suits. In the end we had to go into the garage to be clear of the bees but a couple were waiting for us to reappear.

The bees had to be moved so tonight we took them to a different sight.

So where has this change of personality come from? Last week they were happy, no problems at all. Only 1 hive was misbehaving, the other was as placid as you can get.

Could it be that they are almost at optimum strength and so showing their true colours? Could it be environmental factors? The other colony was fine so I think this is less likely, however, there is a track in the vegetation straight to this hive made by some kind of animal- could it be upsetting the bees in the night?

Anyway, I've split the hive in 2 so that it could be transported easily and in the hope that by reducing the colony strength will also reduce its temper. I will need to go through the 2 halves to see which has the queen, and which is to raise queen cells.

I'm hoping that the move and the split will address the temperament in the short term but think they should really be re-queened in the longer term.

Is there something else I could be missing?

When the other half raises a new queen, is this also likely to produce a feisty colony or is gentleness to dominant gene (wishful thinking here)

[The Drone Ranger]

Gentleness is an easy trait to fix when you select for it luckily
The bees will probably be completely different the next time you open them

[Apiarist]

Never judge the temper of a colony on just one inspection would be my experience, and I've kept bees now for a period of over forty years and seen many bad-tempered bees. There are so many factors that can affect them - time of day, ambient temperature, state of honey flow, type of honey flow, amount of smoke, queenless / queenright state of the colony, presence / absence of queen cells, recent disturbance by another animal (including another beekeeper!), rough handling, etc. etc. And of course, the imherent grumpiness of the bees. I would strongly advise that you give them another chance or two before you condemn them, especailly if they have been OK in the past. People can get out of the wrong side of bed. So can bees!

EDIT
P.S. Is there anything new growing near the bees, or has the grass beside them been recently cut? Bees can go wild at freshly cut grass.

[HJBee]

No cut grass around them, or even in any of the surrounding properties (appx 50m away within the week leading up to Friday. No one had been physically near them for over a week. They had started showing temperament from the week before when a few started proactively chasing me in the garden on the other side of a 6ft fence + 10ft trees at least 10m away from the hive, again no real reason.

[Jon]

If you are worried about temper don't let the colony make a new queen from its own queen cells.
It would be best to get a queencell or a queen from a better colony.
As mentioned above, any colony can have an off day but if this happens several times you should bite the bullet and requeen with better genetics.

[Neils]

I think the advice not to judge the temper on one inspection is a good one, especially if they were ok before. One of mine that were always fine were horrible earlier in the year, I'm reasonably sure it was a combination of the weather and a lack of food, since that was sorted out they've been fine again.

Some bees are just horrible to inspect. I go further than Jon, I not only don't rear any queens (actively or passively) from them I aggressively cull drones and replace drone brood from a better tempered colony.

[Jon]

I aggressively cull drones and replace drone brood from a better tempered colony.

That is a good strategy and one I try and follow myself. You need to flood your area with decent drones.
Last year I requeened any colonies I was unhappy with and at the moment I am confident that all of them are producing decent drones.
Most inspections now I remove a frame and give them a foundationless frame strengthened with fishing line so they can make as much drone comb as they want.

A few I looked into yesterday evening and earlier tonight were more lively than usual which I put down to a dip in temperature and the end of a nectar flow. I always score my colonies on a 1-10 scale and these ones were scoring a 3 tonight instead of a 1.
They were not following or going into a frenzy but there were bees in the air quite a bit and several pinging at the veil.
They needed a bit more smoke as well.

Emse, just personal opinion but I think puffing smoke in the entrance is generally a bad idea. It stirs up the colony and the queen will probably be hiding somewhere rather than laying normally on a frame. I know some of the bee books dish this out as good practice but it doesn't work for me. I try and get away with just a couple of puffs of smoke drifting over the top bars after i remove the queen excluder. Some bees get really wound up by a a lot of smoke and it does not have a calming effect on them - quite the opposite.

[The Drone Ranger]

I use top beespace hives and with double broodbox you often get drone brood between top and bottom box
Sometimes when that gets broken open by taking off the top box tempers flare (even in normally tame hives)

You won't be flooding the area with drones from 2 hives Lol!

[EmsE]

This is the first time the colony has been at full strength as it was an artificial swarm last year. The mother colony was absolutely fine, but she's now a feral colony somewhere:o

Looking at the behaviour that began a couple of days after the previous inspection my inkling is that it could be its true colours coming through. We managed to have a thorough inspection today. We started with the well behaved colony which has undergone the same treatment as the other. They were lovely to inspect- split in 2 for the rushed move I've miraculously got the Queen in 1 box and a sealed queen cell in the other. As the hive was only split less than 48 hours ago that was certainly good luck. They could have been looking at supercedure & if so then they'll try again, but at least I'll have a queen in each box.:D

When inspecting the 'enthusiastic' colony, we were being battered, bees clustered in several places including on us. I know 1 box will be queen less but I'd have expected the other to have calmed down. (still haven't managed to find the Queen, there are no queen cells in either split, but both have eggs so will need to wait until next inspection to differentiate) They've plenty of stores, space etc. Im not in a position to squash any queens just yet but unless things settle she'll be going.

So I will need to get a queen cell from another colony? I'd better christen my queen rearing stuff:cool: nothing too technical, just those things that get nailed onto a frame bar then placed into the receiving colony

Hmmm, could have a problem with the drones- there's loads of them! The ones still in the cells will be easy to deal with, but the others are already out there:eek:

[Jon]

You can have a bad colony which still produces decent drones as the drones only contain genetic material from the queen as opposed to the drones she may have mated with which have fathered all the workers in the colony.

http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/genetic_aspects_queen_production_1.html

[EmsE]

So as the mother was ok from what I saw (that colony didn't manage to get to full strength though before swarming) I have a good chance that the drones carry good characteristic? That's much more manageable

[Neils]

I think if you have a colony that was ok to inspect and now isn't, why might that be?

Things that I've seen that can affect temperament:

Localised weather outside the forecasts.
Ever feel the air pressure drop or even just seen clouds start to roll in?

Prolonged bad weather
Check stores, but also just long periods of rubbish weather can make them grotty.

Entrances
Where are the hive entrances pointed? can they see people wandering about close by? we turned a couple of hives 180 degrees recently, the difference in temper is remarkable.

Sparrows
WE have a pair of sparrows who live by the hives, they love to swoop past the entrances and pick off bees. Drives the bees literally mental, they hate it when the sparrows are playing and you'd better believe they hate us opening up the hives while they're around. 20 minutes of us around to scare the birds away calms them down a lot. No idea what to do about the birds on a more permanent basis.

Robbing.
Horrible because it tends to turn both hives aggressive, one because it's defensive and the other because it's on the attack.

Queenless
Seen a sweet as pie hive go horrible because it's queenless even before we got anywhere near it. Equally seen some that are fine being inspected and others that were fine until we opened it up. If you think there's a virgin queen in it, leave it well alone to get on with it.

just because...
These are the ones you have to deal with. Whenever you open them up they're batting your veil, going for your hands, following

They were nice as pie in a nuc... when they're 9 frames of brood things can change. Personally I think the warning signs are there in a Nuc as well just not as obvious but a small colony is generally more manageable than a full sized colony and I think that takes many new beekeepers by surprise.

I guess the point is that sometimes they can be grotty for a reason.

[EmsE]

Agree with everything there and think there is another reason to add to the list.

Rough beekeepers.

I'm as gentle as possible going through the hive however on 1 occasion in the first year of bee keeping I managed to knock the hive over. When lifting the top brood box, I wasn't aware that the frames in the lower brood box were attached to the bottom of the frames in the top box. the lesson learned to that was to always turn the boxes as I remove them.

Needless to say the bees were furious and would make a bee line for me whenever I went to the apiary. Within a couple of months it was back to its usual self.

Sent from my BlackBerry 8520 using Tapatalk

[gavin]

I'm with Jon. Some sort of random event might be the cause, but more likely is the fall-off in nectar income, the growing strength (dare I say confidence) of the colony, its own propensity to be tetchy, and possibly the situation with the queen.

The inherent temper of a colony can be hard to judge when times get tough, but if you have several colonies you can spot the mild and the less nice ones early in the season when things are quieter. Usually that ranking continues when they get frustrated due to lack of nectar or turn queenless.

Like Jon, I use the smoker as infrequently as I can. I found myself doing the puffs at the entrance the other day but this was at a colony I knew to be powerful and normally tetchy on a cool day when they hadn't been able to forage. That was the first time this year I'd done that.

Beg a mature queen cell from a mild colony from someone if you can, and start to shift the genetics of your stock in a better direction. Or if your better colony makes more Q cells, use one of these. You can protect the base and sides of a 'foreign' cell with kitchen foil, just leaving the tip exposed.

[HJBee]

Nellie has me thinking re sparrows, there is a large family that cavort around in the Hedge that was next to the feisty hive?

Shame all round re neighbours being stung & needing to move, but a real lesson / experience for myself as a beginner!

[The Drone Ranger]

Nellie has me thinking re sparrows, there is a large family that cavort around in the Hedge that was next to the feisty hive?

Shame all round re neighbours being stung & needing to move, but a real lesson / experience for myself as a beginner!

Quarriers Village that sounds great
Are there many other beekeepers around you?
If you are in a rape growing area there will probably be a lot of commercial hives around
When you have only a few hives you are always at the mercy of the local drone congregation
Personally I would let them raise queen cells and select the nice ones.
That takes time because until all the bees are the new queens kids you still have old crazy ones in there
If you choose to use Snelgrove or swarm boards you will always have 2 queens laying in your hives
That lets you get honey and choose between the two queens later in the season
Also if you do acquire a new queen from a gentle strain you can easily put her in the box above the swarm board.
Meanwhile you don't have to open the grumpy bees so often and the neighbours are safe

[Jon]

Opening as little as possible is good advice. If you clip the queen you can get away with two week checks rather than every week. You might lose the queen if you are unlucky but you should not lose a swarm. Even if they swarm the queen often finds her way back inside.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Beg a mature queen cell from a mild colony from someone if you can, and start to shift the genetics of your stock in a better direction.

What is the best way of carrying a queen cell from one apiary to another, Gavin? How long can one keep a queen cell outside a hive? How does one keep it at the right temperature - or are all these questions a bit irrelevant?


You can protect the base and sides of a 'foreign' cell with kitchen foil, just leaving the tip exposed.

Bees accept brood from other colonies - but are they a bit more iffy about a foreign queen cell?
Kitta

[Apiarist]

Bear in mind too that smoking a colony where there is no open nectar (as at the end of a nectar flow or when there is no nectar flow, e.g. cold day even) then the smoke will have little effect. Try this on days when the bees are grumpy (and the beekeeper is perhaps just as grumpy!) and when the bees must be examined:

Find an old squeezy washing-up liquid bottle and rinse it out really well.
Make up a feed of syrup in the ration 2 pounds sugar (or a 1 kilo bag) to a pint of water. Let it cool.
Pour the syrup into the bottle and re-fit the squeezy top.
Open the hive and brood box with a little smoke.
Squeeze a liberal 'strand' of syrup into each gap between the frames.
Keep doing this during the inspection as soon as the bees have licked up the last lot of syrup.

Result:
Slightly sticky but much less grumpy bees
Much less grumpy beekeeper, possibly also a bit sticky, but heyho, it's a small price to pay
Inspection completed without too many stings (or even with none at all)
Time to put your feet up with a self-congratulatory dram

[Jon]

What is the best way of carrying a queen cell from one apiary to another, How long can one keep a queen cell outside a hive? How does one keep it at the right temperature - or are all these questions a bit irrelevant?

It is a bad idea to try and move queen cells until the queen is fully formed, ie less than 2 days from emergence.
At this point the cells are actually very hardy and unless you physically damage or seriously *chill a cell, it will hatch normally.
I brought home 7 cells from the association apiary on Friday evening, a 2 mile bike ride, and put them into apideas before heading out to the bar.
5 queens had emerged when I checked on Sunday morning and the other two were chewing their way out of the cells. And before anyone suggests it, I was not in the bar from Friday evening until Sunday morning.

Queen cells are at their most vulnerable in the four days immediately after capping as the larvae is going through a series of stages and is very easily damaged.

* chill not shill.

[gavin]

What is the best way of carrying a queen cell from one apiary to another, Gavin? How long can one keep a queen cell outside a hive? How does one keep it at the right temperature - or are all these questions a bit irrelevant?

Matchbox or roller cage in a shirt pocket is the usual way.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks, Jon and Gavin.
K

[marion.orca]

Feisty is not a word I'd use for yesterdays behaviour from the hive, more like downright nasty, as they were on the previous visit too. I have taken into account all the possibilities of reasons for this, - nightly disturbance, birds, air pressure etc. and the thought crossed my mind that they could in fact have a drone laying Queen. How would I recognise this to be absolutely sure ? There are little clusters of drone brood [ sorry no photo ], plenty of larva and capped cells and plenty of stores to keep them happy enough. This hive is one that I split from another colony where the Queen and bees were a joy to work with, so just a small starter colony earlier in the year, but now very prolific - just nasty. I haven't put a super on as yet, with them only starting out, so if I add a super, would it work in any way to calm them down ? Or would I have to re- queen them ? - which would be hard to do in finding a Queen here in Lochaber as we are currently varroa free and I wouldn't want to import one from somewhere else.

[fatshark]

DLQ's generally lay in a standard circular/concentric pattern on the frame, drone laying workers scatter them about all over the place and - as mentioned here (http://www.norfolkbee.co.uk/beekeepers-resource/drone-laying-queen-or-laying-workers) - deposit eggs on the side walls of cells. You don't mention eggs, just larvae and capped cells ... could the hive have swarmed or otherwise gone queenless? In my experience (though pretty limited) the presence of a DLQ does not change the temper of the colony. I suspect it's more likely the absence of a queen, lack of forage or the weather.

[Rosie]

Or would I have to re- queen them ? - which would be hard to do in finding a Queen here in Lochaber as we are currently varroa free and I wouldn't want to import one from somewhere else.

It sounds like a classic F2 hybrid case to me. If I am right then someone has already imported bees to your area.

Steve

[Jimbo]

There are different levels of nasty. I usually find the worse is when a hive goes queenless. The bees tend to bounce off your veil and don't give up trying to sting you. You think the hive may have a drone layer. This is quite possible as we have experienced poor mating weather in the West of Scotland. The capped drone brood tends to be on the face of the comb instead of around the sides of the frame. If you leave it long enough the bees will make a mess of the whole frame. When you open a DLQ hive there are a lot of drones which also tend to fly out at you and as they make more off a buzz it makes you think they are nasty.
If you confirm it is a drone layer I have in the past taken the whole hive a distance from the other hives and dumped all the bees out. The workers will fly back to the apairy to find their hive missing and will go to your other hives. In this way you can at least save some of the bees.
Has anybody other suggestions on how to deal with a drone laying colony

[gavin]

Hard to tell. Plenty of larvae and capped brood suggests that either you still have a queen or have recently lost one, but then you should be seeing emergency queen cells from some of the larvae if that is the case.

There is robbing going on in my apiary - could that be the case for you? Look for bees furtively trying to get in. That winds them up for sure!

[gavin]

I've done just that with a drone laying colony. I think that it was Steve who suggested the use of protected queen cells (if you can find a queen cell) to put right a laying worker colony. I've tried it and it does work. A DLQ may be easier to deal with as long as you can find the queen.

However if the colony has good worker brood that is not the problem.

[Rosie]

There are different levels of nasty. I usually find the worse is when a hive goes queenless. The bees tend to bounce off your veil and don't give up trying to sting you.y

I agree that queenless bees are more nervous than queenright ones but they should never bounce off your veil. That, to me, suggests that the workers are naturally nasty but are held in check by a gentle queen. Take her away and they revert to their natural behaviour.

Last weekend I showed a friend 2 stocks that had been queenless for about a month. They were still as gentle as can be and I went through the whole of both colonies with minimal smoke and without gloves. I hope the queen cells I gave them will yield queens as good as the last ones.

This friend, by the way, is new around here and was planning to start a local nuc supply business based on carniolans. After seeing these and other local bees he's changed his plans completely and is in the process of requeening all his own stock. I didn't have to twist his arm, I just showed him the evidence.

Steve

[marion.orca]

The hive stands on its own in the area - the nearest other [ known ] colonies are over 5 miles away - one of which is my own. I am almost certain that if there was another beekeeper close by, I would definitely know about it, given the small population of the village. I would therefore also presume that nobody has imported other bees into the area/ close by. they therefore also have exclusive access to forage in and around the village, and I've seen them in my own garden on the Hemp Agrimony. The capped drone brood is little clusters on the face of the frame, as opposed to around the sides. I intended to put a super on today - rain stopped play - but would that help at all ? If the weather improves tomorrow, I will try and get a photo at the same time of some of the frames to show a better idea and hope that they are just a wee bit calmer than they were and have a go at posting the photo. Thanks for all your helpful suggestions.

[Trog]

To Marion: It may just be the weather, having looked at the pressure chart for today and yesterday. We were caught out by an un-forecast thunderstorm 2 hours after a not particularly enjoyable inspection a few weeks ago and more recently one colony was nervous the day before the sort of weather our area is experiencing today. They were AMMs and normally delightful to deal with but I picked up two stings within seconds of opening up. By contrast, the huge colony that normally has to be treated with great respect was pretty docile!

Are the new bees nearly filling the brood box? If so I'd super up with perhaps unwired foundation to see if they can give you a heather crop. Or, if you have some ready-drawn wired foundation, you can always scrape out any heather honey and sieve it!

[EmsE]

....If you confirm it is a drone layer I have in the past taken the whole hive a distance from the other hives and dumped all the bees out. The workers will fly back to the apairy to find their hive missing and will go to your other hives. In this way you can at least save some of the bees.
Has anybody other suggestions on how to deal with a drone laying colony

I did this last year to one of the colonies that had a drone layer in towards the end of the season. For some reason they all clustered on to one of the bricks that the hive was stood on.
The ones I found earlier in the year, I placed in a frame of worker eggs from another colony after removing the drone laying queen the day before. It did produce a good queen, although it did limp through the rest of the season and winter (I was convinced it wouldn't make it) probably due to lack of workers. If I need to do this again, I would provide extra sealed brood from another colony to give it a boost and a better chance.

[marion.orca]

I think my next course of action is to get a photo and post it, whilst at the same time looking for the Queen - [ my skills are not so good in that area ] , mark her if found, and put a super on at the same time. It would have to be wired foundation as opposed to unwired, but I don't mind having a good scrape for heather honey - should I be so lucky ! It did rain a couple of hours after I got home, but we didn't get a thunderstorm at all. It is also possible that I could do away with the Queen [ if found ! ] and bring a frame or two from my other colony, which is about 5 miles away. I'd hate to have to inspect them if they were permanently like that, not enjoyable at all.

[chris]

Back at the end of May, I inspected a colony that had capped drone brood all over the face of each comb,and a majority of drones in the hive.There were a couple of supercedure cells,nicely devloped, with a fat c2 inside.I could see eggs, but thought they could well be drone eggs. I found the 2 yr old queen. As I didn't know what was in the queen cells,(male or female) I added a frame with all 3 stages of brood, so the bees could make a new queen. On my next visit, I found a lovely Q cell in the middle of the added frame.Next visit, capped worker cells and fresh eggs. So the new queen had mated and was laying, although I couldn't find her. What I did find, was the original, marked queen :confused::confused:

The colony is now doing really well, and my drone laying queen is still there.
And the behaviour of the bees, which had turned nastyish,is back to calm.
Ho hum.

[marion.orca]

Reading all of the above it tells me that the behaviour issue can indeed be rectified, so I will see what happens tomorrow - not a great forecast, dry, cloudy and a light northerly wind, but better than today. Lets hope I can find the Queen without having to call in anybody to help as the nearest association member who could, is about 30 miles away. I'm what you could call out on a limb a wee bit !

[EmsE]

Well, today all my colonies, except for a swarm I caught about a week ago were unhappy. They were fine for about 30 seconds after opening and then turned nasty- just after we spotted a wasp in there. Think that explains it in this case. Lovely sting on the wrist to remind me of their frame of mind. The entrance blocks are already on the small setting as it hasn't warmed up enough this year, but will need to find a way of narrowing them down a bit more.

[marion.orca]

Update on what I think may be a Drone laying Queen. On todays visit, the bees were marginally better tempered, but I can probably attribute that to the lovely sunny weather with a touch of breeze. I didn't spot the Queen [ probably need to shout for help with that ] though I did get some photos of frames. Yes there are clusters of drone cells at the edges, but also centrally. The colony was started on 07/05/12 with 2 frames of stores and 2 frames of BAS plus a new Queen. Since then all my records tell me that they have been very calm until 10/07/12 when they started to turn "feisty ". They are now on 8 frames and are drawing the last 2 outer frames. So why have they changed in the past month ? and have I indeed got a Drone laying Queen ? I added a super and Qex at the same visit. Here are the images.1127 - not sure if I have done that right, so hope you can view them.

[Jon]

Most of the brood in the pictures is normal worker brood.
Unless they have a couple of frames where they can make drones they will try and squeeze in drone brood wherever they can at edges and gaps.

[EmsE]

Hi Marion,

You mentioned that they were now prolific, do you feel they could have been short on bee space? If so, then adding the super will certainly help and hopefully your next visit will be better.

As there is plenty of worker brood i wouldn't worry about her being a drone layer.

[marion.orca]

Thanks for the replies. I don't think they have been short of space as they had 6 spare to start off with [ 2 now ]. Would it be wise then to cull some of the drone brood [ as I've read elsewhere on the forum ] or wise to just leave well alone and let them be. Or perhaps a second brood box under the super ? Not really been a great start since I began last year in July, but hey ho, not giving up just yet, so that's a good sign !

[Jon]

Bees making drone brood like this feel good about themselves. if a colony is under pressure it gets rid of its drones so I would take that as a sign of a healthy colony.
Most of my colonies have at least 2 or 3 frames mainly covered with drone brood and some of them would have literally thousands of drones.

[marion.orca]

It's hugely reassuring to read replies such as this - thank-you. I know I'm in the right place to ask things I'm still unsure about, and maybe in time, I can return the compliment to other beginners.

[Jon]

When you look through a hive try and make sure you see brood in all stages (BIAS) ie eggs larvae and sealed brood.
Also make sure there are stores.
In your pictures I can see sealed brood and sealed stores but it would be reassuring to know that you saw larvae and eggs as well.
There are also pollen cells of various colours which is a good sign.
Even if you can't find the queen the presence of eggs means that your colony is almost certainly fine and dandy.

Your bees look like a mixed bunch, dark but quite a few with yellow banding, which suggests you have some kind of a local mongrel.

[Bridget]

Hey Marion, I started the same time and also can never spot the queen. I also have not found a bee buddy and the local association seems v small and meets on a day I can't do - also its 35 miles away. Interested to see your photos but I cant help as my problems are different. This post is just for moral support :0)

[marion.orca]

Moral support always welcome and returned - thanks

[prakel]

I think my next course of action is to get a photo and post it, whilst at the same time looking for the Queen - [ my skills are not so good in that area ]

Hi Marion, I know that we all do things differently (thankfully) but you may find it worth trying my standard inspection procedure which is to always kneel down when going through the brood. Obviously your own build combined wth the height of your hive stands may have a bearing on whether this is possible.

When I kneel down I am able to pull a comb for inspection while simultaneously scanning the newly exposed side of the next comb in the box thus increasing the likelihood of spotting the queen. In fact, I would claim that it's very rare that I don't see a queen during a normal inspection which considering that I'm not looking for her on the majority of occasions isn't bad going.

Another advantage -as I perceive things- is that when kneeling down I present less of a target/threat/obstacle/what-have-you than I would if I was stood up and I'm convinced that I receive fewer stings even from agressive colonies (of which I've had more than my fair share of experience).

I adopted this method about 15 years ago while suffering from a back injury; it was recommended on more than one occasion in the writings of Steve Taber. My back is now 100% but I never wanted to return to stand-up inspections.

[marion.orca]

Thanks for that tip Prakel - I'll give that a try - especially as I can see the logic in presenting less of a threat. My thinking is also that perhaps she will be easier to spot later in the year when there are less drones present, so it is not imperative that I mark her straight away, but it would make life easier for next year. So I'll give that one a go, along with all the other tips I have read on here.

[Jon]

When Meg Seymour visited our association apiary in May I noticed she did the inspections kneeling down if the hive stand was low.

26th May, a beautiful sunny day, one of the few this summer.

Has a kind of a Buddhist temple look about it.

1186

[prakel]

Thanks for that tip Prakel - I'll give that a try - especially as I can see the logic in presenting less of a threat. My thinking is also that perhaps she will be easier to spot later in the year when there are less drones present, so it is not imperative that I mark her straight away, but it would make life easier for next year. So I'll give that one a go, along with all the other tips I have read on here.

I hope that it (I'll call it the Steve Taber method for the sake of naming it) helps.

It may take a while to train your eye to scan the face of the following comb simultaneous to removing the one that you're inspecting next but it's well worth persevering with. It realy can save a lot of time.

With regards to the idea of presenting less of a 'threat' that's pretty much what I've come to believe over the years although it may strike some as being rather counter intuitive to actually get your face closer to the bees. Not necessarily the obvious thing to do. No matter what, it certainly reduces any obstruction which you might otherwise cause to returning foragers.

[marion.orca]

"Your bees look like a mixed bunch, dark but quite a few with yellow banding, which suggests you have some kind of a local mongrel."

Bees meanz Heinz then. Happy to have a mongrel variety, in the dog world, mongrels are usually more robust than pure breeds - wonder if that applies to the bee world too ?

[gavin]

Aha! Careful, we're into a topic with strongly held views, gut reactions, underlying philosophies, and where what you do affects your distant neighbours in a way that simply doesn't compare to whether or not a gardener will sometimes apply glyphosate to tidy up his garden.

Are mongrels more robust than a pure-bred native Lochaber Apis mellifera mellifera? Not sure. Probably not, but if you look after them your mongrels should do well. One aspect that may affect them is the need to breed with other stocks. A small number of stocks in an isolated area will suffer from inbreeding depression within a few generations. There are isolated Amm stocks which seem to remain healthy despite likely limited contact with other stocks, so maybe native bees are better at this inbreeding issue. But that is wild speculation, not fact.

Gavin

[marion.orca]

Don't wish to start a heated debate about Amm whatsoever ! Be assured my little " mongrels " will be most carefully looked after. As you know we are limited here in Lochaber for stock - and rightly so for the moment - but there are possibilties to breed with other stocks in the future - the islands spring to mind as one example - with one of the islands having the Colonsay Black bees.

[gavin]

I'm curious, and I hope that it is OK to ask this - are your stocks locally sourced? I suspect that you've already said that they are sourced locally, in which case it does look like the local stock is not Amm.

[marion.orca]

Absolutely locally sourced - keeping in line with the request of LBA, not to import stock outwith Lochaber, due to the risk of importing varroa to the area.

[Trog]

A smiley and brownie points from me to you, m.o. for not importing! Maybe you could get your wings checked? I did and found to my surprise that my mongrels were more amm than I had thought from their appearance!

[marion.orca]

Thanks Trog - but no brownie points needed - [ like smileys though ! ] I'm just abiding by what I believe to be right for this area. I'm not too concerned about their genetic make up at this stage in my beekeeping, just to keep them healthy and learn to care for them to the best of my ability is enough for now. Perhaps sometime in the future I may become interested in that side of things - who knows ?

[Jon]

Steve Rose always says that with his stock the bees with yellow bands can be reasonably pure AMM (according to wing morphometry, another can of worms)
With my stock, I always assume the virgin queen has encountered a few yellow drones.

But the most important thing is sourcing bees locally especially if you are in a varroa free area.

[Jimbo]

If you want your bees checked just send me approx 50 worker bees and I will do the wing morphometry for you. There are still some people in varroa free areas that may be able to help you source new stocks or queens

[marion.orca]

Thanks for the offer Jimbo, it maybe something I will think about in the future.

[Rosie]

Go on - send the sample. We're all curious now and you must be too!

Steve

[Jimbo]

I'm with Steve on the yellow banding. Being a sad person I separated the yellow bands from the dark bees from the same hive and did the wings. I was supprised to find the yellow bands also fell within the Amm box although the sample was small.

[marion.orca]

Ah Rosie ! You will have to curtail your curiosity - once I have made a decision - [as in looking at it at a later stage in my beekeeping ] I stick with my decision.