Hot Hives: How to Deal with Aggressive Bees

Learn effective methods to handle aggressive or defensive bee colonies, including bleeding off flying bees, requeening, and expert tips for a smoother and safer beekeeping experience.

In this blog article, we will look at how to best handle and deal with bees showing aggressive or defensive behaviour. To understand why bees may display aggression or be overly defensive, you may want to start by reading: Why are some bees aggressive?

One of the most effective ways of dealing with an aggressive or defensive colony is bleeding it of its flying bees. The flying bees are the ones who typically display aggressive or defensive behaviour. A colony depleted off its older workforce are much easier to handle. This is because it has a higher proportion of the much calmer house bees. Coincidentally, this is what is often done in advance of bringing colonies to shows and demonstrations. (You are left with the most docile bees which makes for a calm demonstration and easy handling.)

Bleeding off the flying bees

The process of bleeding off the flying bees is one that essentially splits the colony in two, leaving the queen with the younger bees in the brood box and removing the older foragers. You can do this either as a temporary or permanent measure, depending on what you would like to achieve. Not only is it very effective it can also be done without opening the hive if dealing with a very feisty colony. (Some manipulation is preferable if the colony has supers on.)

Method

1. If the colony has supers on lift off the stack of supers in one go without lifting off the crownboard. Swiftly place a crownboard or roof on top of the broodbox/queen excluder to avoid any bees flying out.
2. Lift the whole remaining hive (A) containing the queen and brood, including the floor, and move it to a stand a couple of meters from the original location. (If the colony does not have supers on, simply move the whole colony.)
3. Place a new floor and broodbox (B) in the original location. Then place one frame of open brood in the box, (eggs and young larvae from a good colony if you want the split to be permanent and for them to make a queencell from it). Fill up the rest with frames of comb or foundation. Place a queen excluder on top and replace the supers and roof.
4. Leave for a couple of hours or until you need to inspect or manipulate the colonies.

What happens after the split is that the flying bees from broodbox (A) containing the queen will return to the new box (B) in the original location and leave the younger bees in broodbox (A) with the queen. The supers stay with the older bees in the original location as otherwise there is a risk of robbing. The reason why you may give the flying bees a frame of open brood is so that they can set in motion the process of queen replacement (even if you are going to interrupt it later). This is because they then consider themselves queen right and should calm down considerably.

Inspecting and locating queen

Even if you have not taken the step to move the broodbox in advance to bleed off the flying bees, I would advise you to consider temporarily moving the broodbox for the duration of the inspection. It will make it easier as you will have less bees flying around you. Set up an empty nuc or brood box next to where you are working. Place any frames that need further investigation in it. You can also place the frame with the queen in here in case you need to perform swarm manipulations. Work calmly and methodically. You do not need to look for everything. Check for the presence of a queen (queen or eggs) and queencells during swarm season. Use the smoker. Remind yourself that while this is not pleasant, it is only temporary, and you are doing what you can to remedy the situation.

If you need to find the queen for swarm management reasons, or to replace her, splitting the colony as described above is by far the calmest and least invasive method available. Other methods involve thoroughly inspecting a broodbox with feisty bees, or even worse, shaking them through a queenexcluder.

Splitting a hive of aggressive bees

If the colony is large, one of the easiest ways of dealing with hostile behaviour is to split it as described above. You can then let the flying bees raise a new queen or introduce a laying queen. This type of split is preferred simply because it requires minimum comb manipulation and handling of bees. It makes it easier for the beekeeper. You do not have to open the original brood box if a frame containing open brood or a queencell is added from a different parent colony with good traits. Usually, both colonies will calm down considerably. This is due in part to the decrease in size and amount of bees in each colony. The original queen can then be replaced.

Another way of dealing with colonies showing difficult behaviour is to swap position of two colonies of similar strength. Reduce entrances to half and watch out for fighting. Reverse if necessary.   

Requeening an aggressive or defensive bee colony

Requeening an aggressive or defensive colony requires special care as bees in those colonies often kill introduced queens. The process of replacing the queen in an aggressive or defensive colony takes time. While you go through the process, you might have a lot of agitated bees around. Hence, you might want to move the colony to someplace where it will not cause disturbance or be disturbed. The following two methods yield good results:

1. Make a nuc first and introduce a queen. Remove the queen that is to be replaced and return to break down the queencells after a week. You can then join the nuc with the rest of the colony using the newspaper method (described here by Dave Cushman on his eminent site)
2. If you had split the colony in two (1. flying bees and a frame of open brood and 2. nursebees and queen), you can replace the queen in the broodbox that has the nursebees. (Remove queen and break down queencells after a week, then introduce new queen.) Once the queen has been accepted the colony can then be united with the rest of the colony that has the flying bees using the newspaper method.

Ask for help to deal with aggressive bees

If you know you are going to encounter an aggressive or defensive bee colony, ask another beekeeper to help you. Do not work on your own if possible. If you do, even the simplest task can turn into an ordeal. It will be much easier to deal with, especially if moving the colony as you will not have to open it up and move it box by box. Work during the day when a lot of the foragers are out and in ideal conditions if possible. However, if a job has to be done, then just get it done. You will be glad when it is over.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. For more beekeeping tutorials and tips look through the archive here: Beekeeping

Happy beekeeping!

/Hanna

Hanna Bäckmo

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