I Dub the "Pheremone Rebbot" Successful

1067 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by devdog108, Jun 1, 2010

devdog108

Discussion Starter · #1 · Jun 1, 2010

Hey all,

Some of you may know that I had a hive with 3 meds and a deep that I kept splitting. Well, I split them enough and took out the new queen once too many times. They developed laying workers pretty badly. I read and read, researched and asked what to do about a hive this size with laying workers and the conclusion was to add brood frames until they made a queen. Partly being impatient and partly Being the "experimantal" type, I decided to try something different. I decided to shake the hive completely, set a Nuc in it's place, and add 5 more frames of brood from the other 10 hives in the deep. This gave the Nuc a frull 10 frames if fresh brood and a queen. I took the hive, section at a time, about 100 yards away, and began shaking in the deep. It took what seemed like forever. It was an AMAZING experience to see that many bees and to be quite honest, intimidating all at the same time. I watched the Nuc, now 10 frames of fresh brood and a queen get INUNDATED by the bees returning home. After the deep was shook out, I took those frames and set them out in the sun, not retuning any of the drone ridden frames and went to check on the "new hive" They were balling the queen, which i should have seen coming. Well, like a dummy i didn't cage her and they were all over her. I finally got her free and put her in a cricket cage and went back to shaking. Any frame that was drone laden got put to the side, and i ONLY returned honey and pollen back to the "new hive". After all the bees were shaken out and about 12 frames sitting on a log, i double screened the queen and added a worker that was harassing her into the cage. Magically, they played nice, but i just took the chance. I put the "new hive" now down to a deep and 2 meds back together and added the queen in a cage to the hive. Checked on her the next day, everyone was playing nice....waited another day and everyone was still playing nice so I went ahead and released her and off she went. I waited a couple of days and went back through the hive to "see" of i could find her....no joy. Welp, i figured they had enough brood to make another and even saw a few cups starting so I left them to it. I didnt get back until yesterday and decided to check them. Late in the evening i cracked the top and on the first frame i pulled, there she was. I dug just a little bit more and every frame I pulled had eggs...finally SINGLE EGGS dead center and on target. I dub the, PHEREMONE REBOOT COMPLETE.....HIVE SAVED!!! LOLOL...applause:

Beginning, taking the hive to the "drop point"

One frame down...most are already headed bakc to the location

Gotta Find the queen. I ended up putting them back into the Blue Hive after taking this picture....and adding frames.

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beedeetee

· Registered

Joined Nov 27, 2004

2,099 Posts

#2 · Jun 1, 2010

In all of my years beekeeping I have only had one laying worker hive. I did something similar to what you did and learned that I probably should not put a hive back in the place of the one being shaken out, at least for a day or so.

By the time I shook it there was probably only 4 frames of bees. I split a large hive and put half (probably a deep and a half) in place of the one that I was shaking out.

About two hours later, after shaking the bee out, I found all of them dead in front of the new hive that they tried to get back in. I think that forcing them to beg their way into a hive that they know isn't their's would be a better solution.

I have heard that adding open brood over a couple of weeks would stop the laying workers. I will probably try that if it ever happens again. But if I do a shakeout I will leave their hive space empty for a while.