This Saturday I made up (4) 5 frame splits into nuc boxes; (2) from my bad tempered colonies, and two from (2) docile colonies 11 miles away. I had (4) locally raised Northern N.M. queen cells bred by Zia Queens, that were due to emerge Easter Sunday. The (2) docile colonies were a piece of cake, but the other two are quite problematic. A few questions and thoughts:
As mentioned, the two aggressive colonies were from two packages of BeeWeaver last year. Those colonies built up well, exhibited no real offensive behaviors other than an occasional sting or 3. They have always been "runny on the comb", and I could always tell which hives they were just through observation. The queens were green dot marked and were not superseded, overwintering as large, healthy, honey laden colonies, one deep and two med. shallows. This March I was able to reverse the boxes, and do a complete brood inspection frame by frame without incident. I have always worked my bees with veil, and rolled up shirt sleeves, never acquiring a taste for gloves. The first week of April I inspected their brood for queen cells and finally had to close them up before finishing what I wanted to do. They were quite aggressive, much more than I had seen previously. Big, healthy, brood laden colonies, with an unmistaken attitude problem. As stated, I decided to deal with them. Killing off the queens in these hives and introducing mated queens would have been my preferred method, but I was not able to place a fast ship order for mated queens (with the exception of BeeWeavers). So Saturday, I suited up, gloves, suit etc. and dove into the brood, removed 3 frames of solid brood, a frame of pollen and a frame of honey, and shook some extra nurse bees off a couple of frames. As luck would have it, I found the queen quite by accident and killed her. It was extremely difficult completing the intended task of making up a simple nuc, as the bees were more aggressive than I have ever seen. I have worked plenty of cross hives over the years but these bees were far more than cross. If my other colonies were a 1 on the aggressive meter these two hives were now a 7, on a scale to 10, (10 being reserved for 100% AHB). The next hive produced the same results, but I also found that queen (by pure luck) and eliminated her. Even the bees in the splits were hard to deal with and they basically drove me from the yard, fully suited and veiled, inside the cab of my truck. Certainly not my kind of relaxing day in the bee yard.
As these two colonies were not superseded, and not previously terribly bad to work, why all of a sudden are they now almost impossible to work? Could this be a direct result of colony strength? Last summer they were very strong hives and made a super of honey for extraction the first year. Why all of a sudden are they this bad? I sincerely hope that Michael Bush's comment is correct in that the daughter queens "usually aren't as bad". One last question, I am assuming that once all the current brood hatches from these colonies (21 days) and they rear a new queen from larvae (14 days) it will then be 40-50 days before all of the bad genetics have died off and the new daughter's offspring genetics start to appear? Generally if in fact the new daughter queen does not possess aggressive genetics how long should it take before I see a difference in temperment in these colonies? I did consider introducing the queen cells to these BeeWeaver colonies but thought it would have been too early and they would have destroyed them immediately so I left them queen less, not having mated queens to introduce the next day.