One of my dozen full-size colonies has developed a very unpleasant disposition. Their queen is a nice golden, Cordovan Italian, from very gentle stock, but she was open mated here in Tucson, Arizona. This makes all of her drones desirable for mating since they are not affected by her mating since they have no father, but perhaps she open mated with drones from a highly defensive line, hence the excessively defensive nature of her workers.
So, tomorrow morning, I will be disassembling this hive into hopefully, several successful queen mating nucs to receive, in about ten days, my newest batch of queen cells.
Maybe this "Hot-hive" problem is derived from AHB genetic contamination of some feral hives in my vicinity, or not. But I think hot hives can be useful for something after all (divided up into mating nucs). I once considered sending samples from some of my hotter hives for AHB screening, but I don't let hot hives stay hot - I requeen promptly. This is the feistiest colony I can remember having in my apiary, and I've had some feisty colonies. This morning I thought I'd check them out, so knowing they were more defensive than my other hives, I smoked them in the entrance, cracked the lid and gave them a few puffs -- I then gave them a few minutes to digest the smoking, then I was ready to tackle them, I repeated the smoking, this time opening the cover and setting it aside. I gave them a few more puffs, enough to drive the bees down into the frames. I set the smoker down, there were no bees visible now on top of or between the tops of the frames, I loosened the outside frame with the hive tool, I reached down to grasp the frame to lift it from the hive --- bees came pouring out from between the frames, they latched onto my T-shirt and proceeded to show me how they could put their stings into my skin, through my T-shirt. I quickly closed them and started to devise my plan to divide them into nucs, once I am more fully armored, tomorrow morning.
I like Michael Bush's strategy, "divide and conquer" --
Michael Bush on requeening hot hivesSo, Mike (mgates61), what I'm trying to say is that even hot hives can be managed, they will teach us something, and don't let their possibility keep you from enjoying the wonders of keeping bees.