So where are the bees? - part 3

I've thought quite long and hard about this blog entry.
Should I or shouldn't I?
Because this one is quite distressing.

One of my hives of bees has been quite simply full of revolting, aggressive, nasty bees.

Now the normal advice for aggressive bees is to "re-queen" them.  Quite simply remove the producer of the nasty bees and introduce a new fertile queen bee in the hope that her powerful pheromones will naturally calm them and within a generation or two all the nasty bees have died out and lovely new calmer ones have hatched to fill their place.

Trouble is I tried that some weeks ago ....and if anything their temperament has deteriorated, and to add injury to insult it seems as though anyone getting stung by them gets a really nasty reaction -especially me - two batches of antibiotics for cellulitis in 6 weeks was definitely undermining the fun of bee keeping :(

So when we opened a hive down at the apiary and witnessed three queens hatching ( yes THREE!) I jumped at the chance to bring one home and attempt to re-queen my nasty hive.  Two very experienced bee keepers even offered to help.  What could possibly go wrong?

We couldn't find the nasty queen - that's what went wrong.

And the bees showed their true nature. Despite two of us flooding the air with smoke to calm them for every frame removed from the hive 10 bees must have run onto Pete's hands and stung him.  Thank heavens for heavy leather gardening gauntlets.  I wish I'd taken photos ...but frankly I was too busy covering Pete's hands in smoke.
That's 10 bees for every one of 22 frames.... and we went through the hive twice.....you do the maths....

So by now you'll be appreciating that the answer to the question "do you really want a hive like that in your garden?" was an easy one to find.
The tricky bit was what to do with them and how...

I diligently searched the internet for humane ways to kill a hive of honey bees.... the step by step instructions are really quite easy to follow..

At dusk when all the flying bees re back in the hive...

1. Block the entrance and seal with gaffer tape, and tape up the gaps between the boxes - aim to make the hive airtight...

2. Block the feed/ porter holes in the crown board, I used an old pillowcase...

3. Put a pad of cloth (another old pillow case) and a wad of newspaper on the varroa board under the hive - it helps catch drips of petrol and reduces air flow..

4. Unblock one feedhole and drip in a  jam jar's worth of petrol

5. Reblock the hole

6. Put the roof on and leave for 24 hours

7. Remove all the frames, clear out the corpses...

and believe me a big colony is a lot of corpses....they were jammed up against the entrance... lets not think about how hard they were trying to get out as they died...

and then ...just when I thought it couldn't get any worse I discovered that some of the bees trapped at the bottom under the bulk of the bodies were still alive...

So how do you humanely dispose of nasty bees that are writhing and half poisoned by petrol fumes...

You finish them off as fast as you can with a blow torch...

So there you have it.  My lowest point thus far as a bee keeper.  I feel a strange sense of guilt at feeling so relieved that they are gone, and I really do hope I never have to do anything like this again.