# What to do with this box full of bees?



## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

It's getting late, I'd leave it until spring thaw to deal with it then.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

It is not wise to keep them there in your drive way. Bees are light sensitive so in the early morning just before
the daylight they will try to fly. Orientation flight this time with 30,000 to 60,000 bees coming out all over your
drive way. If you don't take care of them before 6am then someone will complaint. Fighting the daylight hours with
bees flying everywhere is no fun. Been there, done that! I hope you are far far away from the next neighbor.

Even if you locked them in tonight the 60s day temp. will fry them inside. And with so much honey on the floor they will
stick to the bees creating a big mess like the "iamawaterbu" party post. Better take care of them now. Maybe to put them
in your backyard tonight. Africanized, aggressive bees are not fun to deal with. One come all will come! See the post here that the keepers all covered
with them. Better take care of them tonight before the daylight hours.


----------



## TylerStewart (Oct 15, 2014)

They aren't trapped in the box, there's little gaps all over the place, we just wrapped it to keep them in while we were driving back tonight. We don't really have any neighbors (end of the street with the next house vacant). I'll be moving them as the sun comes up tomorrow, just trying to decide whether to leave a box of hostile bees out at our property near our other hives (we have a few acres out in the desert that is fenced in with no neighbors), or whether I start trying to re-queen them now. Ultimate goal is to go into the spring strong for splits (assuming I can build the population in the next few months in a few hives from this one hive now, rather than splitting it in the spring).


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I have never try to requeen AHB before. From the reading here they
are harder to requeen and like to make their own. However, the Italians are more aggressive during the summer time and like to kill off the queens I gave them. But in the Fall to winter time they are more willingly to accept a new queen when I requeen them this late summer. So rather than waiting for them to build up in the Spring time, it is better that you can requeen them now with the Hawaiian queen like the 'Iamawaterbug' thread. He got the Italian queen. So what color are these bees? It is better to give them the same type of queens when you split them up. 
If you can find the queens this late then do split them up into nucs. If not then you have to wait until Spring again. No choice! It it better to put them in a safe place now. The desert fenced in place is a good idea. 
Moving them at 6am on the daylight is not easy either because with the passing minutes more and more of them will come out like water pouring out. With multiple openings they will be everywhere in no time. Been there, done that too! They will fly into your neighbor hives too if you take the hive away into the desert place. Ohh, have fun with this one.


----------



## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

If you have them back at your place. I would let them be till spring. If they make it you will have smaller numbers to deal with then. Or you will just have a mess to clean up. salvaging wax and so on. Less work in the big picture. But I would start thinking about cutting them out. As early in the spring as you can. 
David


----------



## yeogi75 (Oct 25, 2014)

here in the Uk I did one two years ago not very nice job, first I would estimate how many frames you will want and get everything ready for next spring, we rubber banded the coomb into the frames divided between three brood boxes , and used three queens to carry the breed we wanted, be prepared to get stung "a lot" because when cutting coomb to fit frames you trap bees between coomb and hands with sticky gloves , a bucket of water will come in handy, in the spring you have less bees and less honey to stick everything up its hard to describe the best thing to do because we don't have African bees here as there are far too aggressive for us but good luck, 
ps double suit would be advantage as it will make you concentrate on what you are doing 
ps and some extra helping hands experienced if possible


----------



## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

>be prepared to get stung "a lot" because when cutting coomb to fit frames you trap bees between coomb and hands with sticky gloves ,

I Bushkill vacuum the bees into a box of comb, frame the combs with no bees on them, and then introduce the bees onto the comb when finished. Minimum handling of bee covered combs, mad bees contained in vacuum box.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

These are the Africanized bees known to be aggressive at robbing and hive expansion and swarming too. Joseph talk about them trying to take over his mating nucs by testing the weak nucs continuously. They expand aggressively to take over all the native bees in south America in a short time moving into the US by transport on a ship unintentionally I think. Yep, it is not fun dealing with them now at day light on his drive way. I would just pick up the entire box to moved them out into the fenced desert place if I were him now.
Then take my equipments to clean them up and requeen them while they are still small in size. They can over winter alright if not better than the regular honey bees.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I would screen any place they can get out (a stapler and screen wire) and duct tape any place too small to screen (duct tape and a stapler to keep the tape from falling off) and get several people to help you load it up.


----------



## TylerStewart (Oct 15, 2014)

I got them moved before the sun came up yesterday (Sunday) morning. After gathering some empty boxes and frames, I opened it up to see what we were working with. The comb was mostly twisted in random patterns which made it a pain to neatly fit it into frames. The left side had a few layers of nice flat pieces, but they were tall; not wide. Much of the comb looked like a twisted piece of metal that fell out of a truck on the highway. I cut out and 'mounted' about 7-8 frames of honey and 6 frames of mostly brood (there was a lot of brood in there) and set that up between two deep boxes. There was a lot of bees with it, so I set them up as a split, basically, and I haven't even touched about 60% of the comb in the original box. Most of the bees went deeper into the big box as I was removing comb, so there's still a long way to go, and I never came across a queen that I noticed (I'm sure she was deeper than I got). Also saw lots of drones which was unexpected. I ran out of time so I closed up the box and I'll probably keep working at it when I have some free time. A few queens are on the way this week; I'm going to use push in cages to acclimate them for a longer amount of time than the regular queen cages. 

This was right when I opened it up.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Good job Tyler. This is the right process to use.
Your decision making is right on. Thumb's up on this one.
Remember that they will begin to make queen cells right away if
there are eggs or young larvae with the combs. So on your new caged queen introduction you must take out all their queen cells first otherwise they will not accept the new
queen and might kill her too. Find the darkest spot on the sealed brood comb to push the queen cage in. It is harder to requeen AHB from 
what I read. So the longer time might be needed before releasing the new
queen. But with emerging young bees she might be accepted faster. Give her more time on this process to be sure she is fully accepted first before releasing. I am sure you know how to handle this process well.
Nice work!


----------



## TylerStewart (Oct 15, 2014)

Thanks! Now for the bad decision making; A week and a half ago, I was under the impression that I could get queens. Yesterday I was pretty much universally shut down by some queen producers (in Hawaii, California and Georgia) that recently had them available, so I've gotta decide whether I try to get the complete group within this box I got going the other day, or hope that they make a new queen (might be a stretch this time of year), unless I can come up with some queens (if anyone knows of any available, by all means, let me know!).


----------



## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

In previous posts to Beesource, this company has indicated that they often have queens into December:
http://beesflorida.com/wp/queen-bees/

I don't know if that is the case this year, but its worth a call.


----------



## TylerStewart (Oct 15, 2014)

Thank you for the reference, it looks like they do have some available.


----------



## pahammer (Oct 8, 2012)

Tyler,

http://buttsbees.blogspot.com/p/queens.html

ARE YOU HAVING A QUEEN EMERGENCY....? NO SWEAT! We have emergency queens year-round!


----------



## jimsteelejr (Sep 21, 2012)

One thing to remember is bigger hives are generally a more aggressive that smaller hives especially Africanized bees. We have helped requeen several very aggressive hives. The older bees (the foragers) are the most aggressive. When we encounter a large aggressive hive the first thing we do is move it at least twenty feet or more away from where it sat. then we break it down into individual boxes and separate each of those by twenty feet or more. Then we can deal with much smaller numbers at a time. In you situation waiting till mid morning when most of the foragers are out would be a good place to start. As soon as you feel most of the bees are in the air move the hive away and put a box with some of the honey comb in its place.This should anchor a lot of the foragers and make it a lot easier to work the rest of the bees. We have even resorted to using beego to drive a lot of bees out before we move the hive the first time. If you get queens that would be best but if not you should still be able to make three or more smaller hives. Don't put any young brood comb in any of the hives only older. then give each start a frame of eggs or young brood from your other hives and let them make queens from your gentler bees.


----------



## TylerStewart (Oct 15, 2014)

Thanks! We have pretty much worked through it at this point.... As I got deeper into it, it's pretty clear that the box had turned over in the past, or that the comb all fell down into a pile at some point. There was pieces almost football size in there of comb just wadded up. We set up a few new hives as we separated what we could, basically made the original box inhospitable for them, slid it over and left a new hive in its place (yesterday AM). I went back early this morning to see if they had moved over, and there was a big cluster of bees hanging in the ceiling of the original box. I shook them down in a big group and dumped them on the top of the new hive and left an inner cover on it to hope to keep them in there a bit. I'll probably just do that once a day until they abandon the old box (still smeared with honey and comb, everything is a mess out there). I moved a small trailer out there yesterday afternoon probably 200 feet away from this and they were dive bombing me, nowhere near the hives. Haven't been able to find (reasonably priced) queens available before December 9th (shipping on the 9th), so I'm just hoping they stick around in the meantime. I have a few of the push in queen cages about 5" squares that I'll use for somewhat of a long term queen introduction (7 days?) since they are so hostile, and probably won't be too thrilled about a new queen.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

My bees are still brooding up in this early winter. 
If I were you I will put the new queen inside a wrapped #8 hardware frame with newly emerging and attendant nurse bees.
This way she will be well taken care of and can continue to lay. In no time her scent will spread thru out the hive for better acceptance. 
If you cannot find new queens then consider making the hives a bit stronger with fewer extra hives to requeen. 
When you have enough to fill the hive boxes then the honey and wax can be used. 
Nobody say you have to use up all the honey and wax when they have enough in the hives. 
You can always make more splits when they grow again in the Spring. No need to be in a hurry to find the expensive queens in this winter.


----------

