When Todd and I put AfterSwarm B in the box, I thought it would be a good idea to add a frame of brood to make sure they stay.  I’ve read that’s advisable with virgin swarms.

So down to the bee yard we went.  I figured I would take the brood from Q1 as they really are not producing honey anyway and I wouldn’t be interrupting that process.  Well, we figured out which of my colonies is meaner than hell!  We didn’t use smoke, so there is that. But I’ve been having trouble with defensive bees running us out of the garden and remainder of the yard in front of the hives.  I wasn’t sure how to determine which colony was the offender.

When we took the screen off, they came out in waves.  The top box seemed to be stores so we moved that to the side to access the brood.  Yet another wave of bees emerged and tagged Todd.  They followed him and stuck with him for quite sometime.  I hadn’t been tagged so I continued to attempt to remove the brood but every time I put the hive tool to the frame another wave of bees emerged.  I abandoned effort, reassembled the colony and left them to cool off.

Today, I decided to feed the primary swarm (in the same row of colonies as Q1).  Even though I approached from the rear and was not messing with Q1, Q1 was bouncing all over me.  I persevered and fed the swarm.  I also wanted to remove the mite boards.  This proved to be a little more difficult than expected and I had not brought the necessary tools.  Again I hadn’t touched Q1, but as I was backing off from that project, they stung me in the back of the leg!

I’m tired of dealing with them!  I talked with Allen and discussed my options.  He recommends putting in some capped queen cells and killing the existing queen.  As far as I’m concerned that involves a lot of time with some nasty bees.  Not worth it to me.  I’m pretty much figuring on killing them.  I could just close them up after dark and wait for them to die.  The drawback I see with this option is that they may get diseased before they kick the bucket and that may spread to my other colonies.  That would not be good.  Allen said I could dump a bucket of soapy water on them.  If they were closed up that might be a safe option.  Does anybody know if I could use the comb again if I doused it in soapy water?