# Mean Hive



## Richinbama (Jan 15, 2018)

I'm New , but have read a bit on this... splitting hives help, a mature hive will be calm, or mean. Timing of hive manipulated has to do with this, weather.. cloudy, dark, rain, temp. Also, I've read to request with proven gentle queens. . Others will chime in. I'd do my splits, pinch the old queens after securing new queens. 24 hrs after getting the old queens out. Introduce new queens with your method of intro. Hope this helps. I think after re queening, it takes like a month or so to start seeing her brood, and temperament coming out. When the old bees die out.b


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## Cyberman (Aug 23, 2016)

jrshay said:


> I am a treatment free beekeeper with 7 years experience. I caught a small swarm my first year of beekeeping. This swarm has managed to survive mites, small hive beetles and my learning curve. I have purchased several other packages and they have all died out within 1-2 years. The problem with the survivor hive is that they are meaner than a 'junkyard dog'. I have split the hive twice. Both splits are also survivors but hot! I hate to kill the 3 queens. Does anyone know if I continue to split the hives will I eventually end up with a more gentle hive. Is temperament determined only by the queen? Can local drones influence the temperament and calm down the meanness? I would appreciate any suggestions. I want to save the survivor genetics but it is no fun to work these bees.
> Thanks.


Well you could have that special mite and hive beetle resistant feral swarm that everyone has been waiting for. If you requeen you lose the genetics and replace it with a commercial bee's genetics. I would make several hives from it and select the most gentle one of the lot. Then make queens from that one for the others. Then keep repeating that process getting more gentle bees each time. Its a process.
Keep monitoring their mite resistance along the way so you don't lose it in your selection process.


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## Notapro (Dec 16, 2014)

I had a similar situation a couple times. I broke the mean hive down into 4 nucs, waited a couple days and they had calmed down a lot. I then found the nuc with the queen and pinched her. All 4 nucs succesfully raised a new queen. I waited about 6 weeks after the split and I kept the two most gentle queens. I pinched the other two and did a newspaper combine so I ended up with two hives and have not had anymore issues with them. Did the same thing on another hive but it was smaller and only made two nucs from it.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

In my experience you have a fair chance of getting a nicer queen from the offspring but if you've split it several times and you did not, it might be time get some new genetics. But you could also try again. If you remove the queens and let them raise new ones there is a chance they will be nicer and you can keep the basic genetics.


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