August 4th (Pru's birthday)

I inspected a hive today that I took honey from last week. Originally the bees in that hive I picked up as swarm. It was quite a large swarm that I collected some time last year. I can't remember when exactly but it was early enough for me to find out that these bees didn't like being disturbed - they stung and I needed to gloves on when I opening them up.

Last year they built up a strong colony and came through this 07/08 winter OK. When inspecting them I could never find the queen and they were unpleasant. I took them through last winter on a double brood box and as I couldn't find the queen I took a gamble at the start of the year as to which box the queen was in and put a frame of eggs in the other box (from a different hive where bees didn't sting so bad). The following week I found queen cells on the frame that I had introduced so my gamble had paid of and the queen was in the other box. So half of the angry bees were now going to breed a 'nicer' queen. (which I think they did)

After I had been through the box with the queen in twice again I gave up on looking for that queen and left that colony alone for a while.

Gradually over the weeks that colony started to grow and those bees made their annoyance of my visits to that apiary increasingly apparent so I took of half of the bees again (those above the queen excluder) and unighted them with another weaker colony and as I wanted to breed more queens in that apiary I moved the angry queen in the brood box three miles away to an apiary where I keep angry bees.

Finally after they had been in the new apiary for a while I found the queen and marked her yellow . Then I left them alone pretty much to make some honey. They had been messed around enough and were now out of the way of people. Except possibly the young hooligans who turned a hive over in that apiary last winter.

I had increased the space for the queen to a brood and a half before taking a good full super of honey off last week and there right in the middle of the super was one queen cell just at the start of production.

Today it was late in the evening before I got to inspect the hive. Last week as I took the honey off but put an extra brood box on and another super. So tonight there was one super that I had put on last week empty (now with two frames of honey in it) and one super with a frame in the middle with the longest queen cell I have seen this year on it - just one queen cell. And below that super were the two brood boxes of bees.

The bees were skittish and I think getting ready to swarm. I wanted to find the queen and get her out of there. There were lots of bees in the colony so I was pretty certain that they hadn't swarmed.

The top brood box that I had put on last week only had honey and stored pollen in it and no brood so there wasn't much point spending much time looking for the queen in that box. In the bottom brood box most of the brood was on the far side. The first half dozen frames had no new brood in and in between old capped brood there were cells filled with honey.The bees were not intending the queen to lay on those frames for a while.

I had a nuc box ready and as I got to last frame was thinking about having to put the queen cell in there if I couldn't find the queen (earlier in the year I probably would have anyway). I started to go back through the frames again and there on the third frame in I found her with her yellow mark nearly worn completely away. She wasn't a very large queen and was quite dark so it was no wonder she was so hard to find.

Will the queen stay in the nuc box for a while so that I can eventually put her into a new brood box to see if she can survive another winter?

Will a new mated queen get back to the colony OK? ---- Honey Stripes

Will be bees still be as difficult to handle next year with a new queen as they have been in 07/08?

These are now the only bees in that 'angry' apiary now but they are not the only 'angry bees that I have.

Angry bees are often good honey makers - but they are not good for allotments or town gardens if you don't want your neighbours to get stung.