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queen not mated???

4K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  JRG13 
#1 ·
To start, I am new to beekeeping. I was fortunate enough to get my first hive by capturing a swarm in my neighbors yard this spring. They were doing fantastic until about 3 months ago when i went to move them to a new location and they were extremely aggressive. I have never once seen this behavior with this hive and usually went out to inspect them with just a tshirt and no veil. Well, after I suited up and moved them, they then attacked my family and dog. I thought maybe they were africanized but they just werent that aggressive. I was told by a beekeeper I should split the hive and kill the queen and let them make a new one and it will restore the gentleness in the bees. So i did exactly that, i split the hive and smashed the old queen. both hives have made queens now and the original is even more aggressive. the new hive is gentle but i havent seen any eggs in the comb and its been almost a month. has she not been mated yet? or is she defective at this point?
 
#4 ·
That is getting late. I would not have offed the old queen as the first step, I would have moved her out to a nuc. Do florida queens shut down now? Here a shut down queen would be good, but not many would be doing splits then.
Do you have a source of a gentle queen or queen cell? Strong probability that a hot queen will have hot daughters.
Florida keepers?
 
#5 ·
I don't understand the rationale of splitting the hive. I would have just killed the queen they make a new one. Large hive will make better queens than smaller splits.

Or I would have split out the "mean" queen into a small 2 frame nuc. Then let the original colony rear the queens.

Try putting on some 1:1 to get the new queen laying. If theres no food she won't lay.
 
#9 ·
Smaller hives tend to be less aggressive, which is why you break down larger hot hives. I would've requeened with commercial stock personally. Also, sometimes after moves, bees can be more pissy than usual which may have contributed or they're low on stores too.
 
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