Blue Hive Under Attack

The blue hive is under attack!

I noticed yesterday that there were larger bees going into and out of the blue hive. I checked it again today and got stung away from the hive. The bees are definitely still not happy. This is the one that we just requeened. It has plenty of honey, but also has the weakest defenses. The yellow hive next to it has no honey to speak of and is much stronger with an active queen.

I got some old queen excluder from Doug Shaw, who bought some from someone going out of the business. It is old and metal, so it has little practical value (we both like the newer plastic type much better). He was willing to sacrifice it for me to see if it would work keeping the other species out.

I put it up, sticking it to the front of the hive with old wax. It is definitely working keeping the invaders out. (The hive body that has the excluder on it is yellow, but this is the blue hive.) The invaders are dark and have no stripes. You can see in the photo that they are much larger than the honeybees from the hive.