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new beekeeper w/uniting 2 hives questions
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Posted by jdh101 8 (My Page) on Wed, Sep 30, 09 at 13:49
| Hello I am a new beekeeper this year and I started w/2 hives of Italian bees. One hive is very vigorous and the other hive has recently lost her queen. I want to unite the 2 hives and have read about placing a piece of newspaper between them.
Here is my problem; both hives are more aggressive now than they were in the spring. I seem to get stung, 1 or 2 times, each time I handle the hives. I am trying to be slow and patient and I will walk away for a minute or 2 if they become upset. Using my smoker on them only seems to make them fly around now as well. How do I put a piece of paper on top of the strong hive w/o them coming out? Should I try to tape the paper down? Any ideas?
Thank you |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: new beekeeper w/uniting 2 hives questions
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It might not be that they are more aggressive, it's probably your population size, now you have allot more bees then when you started in spring.
Take your smoker and smoke a bit under the lid / hive cover, pry it up with hive tool only about a inch, a minute or so again and take cover off,
bees will go down with smoke, lay newspaper over, no tape, then place weak hive over it.
Italians are on the hot side, most of my new queens have used are Carniolians, they are allot better to handle. Konrad |
RE: new beekeeper w/uniting 2 hives questions
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| Thank you Konrad. I'll go real slow when removing the top. I'm going to re-queen in the spring with Russians or Carniolans. I've moved the hives about 200 feet away from their original site yesterday morning and was going to unite them then but they became very excited so I've postponed uniting them for a day or two. In the meantime, they've been back to visit their original sites during the day but went back to their hives last night. This morning, however, the site that contained the strong hive has what looks like a swarm ball above its original site. I'm hoping they'll go back to their hive again tonight otherwise, I have a swarm to contend with. The swarm size is probably one third of the hive. Does moving a hive upset them enough to swarm? I didn't see any queen cells but I didn't check every frame. I did see lots of brood so I think their queen is still OK. Thank you,
Janet |
RE: new beekeeper w/uniting 2 hives questions
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Good,
I don't think moving them caused them to swarm, ...what was the reason to move, I would think a little late in season
to move, moving does stress them a little and they have to re-orient themselves again. Konrad |
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