Very Defensive bees

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Van A
The risk of losing the new queen is lessened if the nuc is left 24 hrs to allow them to realise they are queenless.
If you put the queen cell to the side of center she can hatch out of the main bees. In an 8 frame we put the cell between frames 1 and 2.
We have had good success with vicious bees with cells in nucs if you can leave it for a while before adding the cell.
Killing the queen and putting a cell in straight away seems to be 50/50 with success.

Yes Sir, Beavo that is a new idea to me, {placing QC between frame 1 & 2.  I always place in between brood frames.  However I understand your logic and the logic is sound advice, I like it, {getting the cell out of traffic.}

With my hives, if I make the hive queenless the bees know the fact in 2 hours as demonstrated by entrance bees.  That is their behavior completely changes within 2 hrs: nervious, LOUD, indecisive movements as the bees walk on the entrance, circle, walk back and forth turning left and right, but the noise is a dead hive away to a queenless hive.

BTW: When I introduce a mated queen, the queen is released in a queen cage, that is an altered full but shallow frame, say 2 inches deep #8 wire.  I place QC in a mating nuc or my favorite method is my queen castle which is a 10 frame Lang hive with 4 equal partitions and 4 seperate entrances.  The queen castle offers 2 full frames to test the laying queen pattern.

I should add I am a hobbyist, my techniques would not be applicable to a large Apiary.

Thanks for sharing your ideas Beavo.
Blessings

[GSF]

I've heard several people around this area speak the same thing; My hives were docile and then they went crazy. Out of 40+ hives I had 14 to turn on me. These bees were waiting on me to get home from work so they could sting me. The hives were 50 plus yards from my house. I "think" I've weeded out the mean ones but only time will tell. Hope you can iron things out.

[tycrnp]

I am in NW FL also.  On of my hives has recently become very aggressive as well.  I did a split last weekend using queen cells from the aggressive hive and got the tar stung out of me.  I may have messed up and just turned 1 aggressive hive into 3....more to come.

[BeeMaster2]

I am in NW FL also.  On of my hives has recently become very aggressive as well.  I did a split last weekend using queen cells from the aggressive hive and got the tar stung out of me.  I may have messed up and just turned 1 aggressive hive into 3....more to come.

TY,
Just put a double screen below a brood box of one of your calm hives and let them make some queen cells. Then remove the queens from the meat hives and add frames with queen cells to each hive. See my post above about calming down a mean hive.
Jim