Aggression
A new queen usually brings peace
Most colonies regard their beekeeper with equanimity. They may fly around you when you open their hive, not because they are aggressive, but because they have been disturbed. An occasional defensive colony becomes aggressive when it reacts disproportionally to anything, not just potential threats. Aggressive bees generally take you out when you get close to their hive, defensive bees go for you after you’ve opened their hive. Aggression usually resolves when the queen (Q) is replaced.
Things that upset bees
Let’s do a thought experiment. You are playing with your baby when a huge giant stinking of hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs) dressed in black silently creeps in and kills your baby. You are tucked up in bed when the roof and ceiling are removed, and bright light floods in. There is an earthquake; you arrive home and find someone on your roof throwing the tiles on the ground, and someone else is stealing the food from your fridge.
These are pretty freaky for us, and it should be no surprise when bees react to similar threats. Dark objects, moving objects, vibrations and carbon dioxide are suspect. Threats that resemble a bear wearing aftershave, walking backwards and forwards in front of the hive, pushing a lawn mower over a pile of bees whilst eating honey.
Persistent causes of aggression
Genetics.
Queenless
Poor inspection technique — prevent squashed bees
Frequent disturbance
Predation
Temporary
Robbing (if managed).
A dearth, particularly after a nectar flow
Vibrating tools
Electric storms
Fragrances like perfumes?
Like humans, some bees are upset more quickly than others. Since we often knock them around every week (very gently), it is not surprising they may show their protest: run on the comb, fly up and chase you away. So their evil behaviour may be due to you. This can become an established pattern. Bees are mysterious. Usually, they are relaxed with autumn feeding and do not rob, other years they are awful.
< Stingers in a glove.
Pheromones
Defence at the hive entrance is orchestrated by alarm pheromones (scent messages). To recruit soldiers, the guards fan pheromones into the hive. Smoke knocks out a bee’s capacity to detect these scents. This is why it is advisable to smoke the entrance before doing an inspection. Bees can release a cocktail of chemicals (40) from a gland that is part of the stinger apparatus. Fifteen of them stimulate one or more alarm behaviours such as flying from the nest to locate the source of the disturbance, pursuing, biting, and stinging. They prepare the bees to fight, reducing their response to food and making them less likely to withdraw in the face of attack.
Aggression between bees
Other than when queens fight each other, aggression is usually concerned with barring foreigners from entering their home.
Admittance is free during nectar flows. At other times, if a stray forager lands, stays calm, hunkers down, sticks out her tongue, and bribes the guards with some nectar, she will be allowed in.
Queenless colonies are initially more aggressive but, after a while, become calmer (presumably when they get laying workers).
A bee’s primary weapon - its stinger
After a worker bee emerges, her stinger takes a while to to mature. After this, she can sting threats like other insects without a problem. Softer things like human skin provide less resistance, so her stinger goes in deep. It is like a barbed fishing hook, she cannot remove it. She dances around until her bottom rips off, like a slowworm that loses its tail when threatened. However, a stinger does not wiggle around. It looks like a cotton thread, and the bee is fatally wounded. The stinger pumps out alarm pheromones, which recruit other bees to attack. Despite the severity of their wound, a few wounded bees live for 5 days.
Smoke knocks out a bee's appreciation of these signals. So, if you are stung, push the stinger out and puff smoke over the area. Speed, not technique, reduces the dose of venom.
A Slowworm sunbathing, asking to be trodden on and to lose the tip of its tail.
Patterns of Defence
Guards
Entrance
Intimidators
Stingers
followers
rangers
rockets
Entrance Guards
Each guard may be on duty for an hour or a day. Some wander around challenging other bees, while others stay in the same position for a while and occasionally rear up on their hind legs in a menacing gesture like a crab. Look carefully to spot this behaviour; it lasts a split second and only occurs when there are more than several bees on the landing board.
Intimidators
When bees line the cracks between frames with their faces towards you, they are alarmed. It is common. Gently smoke them down.
Stingers
If a hive is attacked, the guard bees that linger at the entrance orchestrate entrance defence. They can recruit soldier bees; 40% of the bee in a colony are soldiers. Older bees are more prone to be unpleasant than house bees, so aim to disturb a touchy colony when lots are foraging.
Followers
When you leave a defensive colony, you still constitute a threat that needs chasing away. They send 1–4 bees (or more, depending on the colony’s temperament) that fly whilst doing pirouettes and making intimidating buzzy noises. If the threat moves away, it may get stung; if it does not, it must be stung.
Occasionally, it is a temporary problem that lasts a few weeks.
Rangers
Rarely, a defensive/aggressive colony uses a mobile force to intercept incoming threats. If a ranger bee detects you, she harries you with the buzz off sting pattern. Some unpleasant colonies instruct their rangers to patrol many meters away, perhaps 20 meters from the hive; others less than four meters.
Rockets
Rarely, a bee is trigger-happy. She flies straight at you, may get stuck in your hair or go in your ear, and then stings, no question asked. It is unusual, and occurs after a colony or swarm is disturbed. She will launch herself at a target that is 4 or more metres away. Bees are unpredictable creatures.
Coping with Aggression
See below for techniques to fix it
Do inspections when your neighbours are out.
Inspect the obnoxious hive last. Use plenty of smoke, wear thick gloves, and use masking tape to obscure potential openings, such as where your gauntlets join your suit and gloves. I’ve heard that too much smoke can aggravate bees, but I’ve never noticed.
Avoid shaking tetchy bees off the frames. If necessary, shake them inside the box. Thumping unhappy bees off a frame held over the hive makes them go ballistic.
Swatting: When you have friendly bees, killing them is abhorrent, but if they turn nasty, it does not feel so bad. If a malicious bee comes close to you, and you are wearing gloves, kill it by clapping your hands.
If they catch you unawares, like when I did not zip up my veil, and they attack you inside and outside your suit, I guess you deserve it.
As an emergency measure to protect work-persons, close the hive entrance when the bees are at home. This is relatively safe with a poly hive, but do it at your own risk. If you have wooden hives that is outside my experience, but be cautious. A lock in, is a bad idea; they must pooh, and they may overheat and die. So, if the threat is temporary, close the entrance and replace the roof with a travel screen or varroa mesh taped to the top of the hive. Spray the screen with water a couple of times in hot weather. After the disturbance is over or in the evening, open the entrances. After their incarceration, they bubble out; if they do not fan, that is a good sign.
Move aggressive colonies to a safe space.
Buy your workmen bee-suits.
Retreat into a dark place, and you will effectively wear an invisibility cloak.
Call for help: really offensive bees will plaster your bee suit and fly around looking for someone to attack. Don’t leave a nasty colony and do nothing. If you feel overwhelmed, call for help. That is what Bee Associations are for.
Breed docile bees: Beekeepers with nice mongrels seem to have amiable bees, even when their Q mates with all and sundry. This may be because these beekeepers know how to handle their bees. Occasionally, an unruly colony overwinters and is perfectly behaved in the spring. Perhaps it superseded
Learn about pheromones — Neurobiology of Chemical Communication.
Fixing aggressive bees
Re-queen
Having eliminated all the environmental factors, the cause of aggression is genetic, and the Q must die. Once you have removed the old Q, introduce the new Q immediately if using a proper Butler cage or a protected queen cell. Try not to use purebred queens, as when their daughters or granddaughters mate with mongrels they have a reputation of producing unpleasant bees. If you cannot procure a Q, unite the colony with another.
Destroy
Bees from a colony that maliciously buzz and stings two metres away from their hive, despite not having been disturbed, may be acceptable as long as the public are not put at risk.
If the situation is critical, euthanise the colony by brushing the bees into a bowl of soapy water (a brief squirt of washing -up liquid is sufficient). Alternatively, spray the mixture on to the combs. The advantage of brushing is that the combs can be reused.
If the bees are seriously vile, use petrol. I anticipate that fumigation with Isopropyl alcohol, or acetic acid should work, although I’ve not tried them. Petrol is the standard treatment; 500ml is poured in to the hive. Obviously, it makes everything stink for an eternity. Surely 500ml is excessive.
A bowl of dead bees in soapy water. This is the result of a moderate-sized colony. A large colony will require two bowls.
If you like, place a nuc at the home position to mop up the lost bees and dispatch them the next day. They will be too homesick to trouble you.
Breeding
Beekers who always have perfect bees know what they are doing. The rest of us can learn from Africanised bees (AB), termed “killer bees”, as they are far more defensive than European bees. Selective breeding can significantly improve their behaviour within 4–5 generations. So much is possible! A promising prospect, if you only have a few colonies, is to collaborate with other beekeepers.
Next: what happens when a colony doesn’t have a queen.
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