Out with the bad....

1714 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Flewster, Jun 7, 2004

Discussion Starter · Jun 7, 2004

Ok, I finally have 2 small hives going. One is from a split, they have less than 9 frames total, the other is a swarm I hived a week ago, they only have maybe 3 frames.

I need to get rid of my laying worker hive, they didn't take the queen cells and are determined to continue down their destructive path. But I hate to lose all that worker potential.

I am thinking about doing the dump them out strategy as described to me by various members of this board. But I don't have 100 feet or much tall grass. The best I can do is about 40 feet or 30 feet of weeds.
I wanted to move my two smaller hives where the lw hive is and put excluders under them(get rid of the 1000s drones) . What are the chances that the laying workers or bees from that hive will mess up either of my good(but small) hives?

I am a bit afraid that they would be overwhelmed??

Also, what do I do with 20 frames with capped and uncapped drones but basically good comb(they are small drones)?

[This message has been edited by kookaburra (edited June 07, 2004).]

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Michael Bush

· #2 · Jun 7, 2004

Personally I don't believe that shaking them out 100 yards away will get rid of the laying worker anyway. What shaking out WILL do is cause the bees to be disoriented and disheartened enough to sometimes accept a queen.

But the simplest solution to your problem is just shake them out in front of the other hives. They will all be the "newbees" and even if the laying worker goes into one of the hives they will not accept her as a queen and will kill her.

That's what I would do. Then put the frames in your other hives unless it's a lot of drone comb that you don't want to mess with.

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Michael Bush

· #3 · Jun 7, 2004

I guess the drones was the other question. I'd freeze the drones and put the frames into the good hives. They will clean out the dead drones quite quickly and reuse the comb.

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Discussion Starter · #4 · Jun 7, 2004

I was just worried about overwhelming the two small hives.

I'll try that soon. Thanks for all the help you've provided dealing with this issue.

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Michael Bush

· #5 · Jun 7, 2004

The workers will help the two small hives. The drones that have already emerged will drift to them anyway.

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2hives

· #6 · Jun 7, 2004

A much experienced bee inspector at one of our county beekeepers meetings said: To get rid of laying workers, get a new, fertile queen, spray her with a mixture of Honey-bee-Healthy, and direct introduce her to the hive. He says the HBH will mask her pheremone enough to get the workers to accept her, and she will proceed to kill any laying workers, then you have a queenright colony. Sound too good to be true? I'm looking forward to the responses to this one!

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Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 7, 2004

When I have my full contigent of hives built up I'll be happy to try.
So far it's only 2 new piddly ones and a bad one. I'm just trying to hold my (their) own right now!
(and trying to justify to my wife the money spent and probably nothing to show for it this year!)

They didn't take the 2 supercedure cells given to them that where sprayed with HBH, so I would wonder about a new queen directly introduced.

[This message has been edited by kookaburra (edited June 07, 2004).]

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dickm

· #8 · Jun 7, 2004

On cleaning out the drone comb. Someone mentioned that if you leave it where the birds can get to it they'll peck out the larvae. You try it first and let me know before I risk a good comb, OK?

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Flewster

· #9 · Jun 7, 2004

I left an old comb with some drones still capped out on the picnic table. The next day a bird DISTROYED it pecking out the brood....so unless you want distroyed comb do not leave it for the birds.....

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