Hot Hive, continued

Once I realized I had a problem on my hands, I did the sensible thing: I called in a pro. I have 5 years of experience--he has more like 40. We'll call him P.B. He's been an apiary inspector, and has worked in beekeeping forever. I figured he'd seen it all.

He came out and visited, and confirmed my suspicions (and took about 20 stings in the process): hot hive. Now to decide what to do.

Option one: Move it to the country. I have friends who are still out in the middle of nowhere. I could put the hive on their land, and let it continue to do its marvelous honey gathering.

Option two: break it up into two or three smaller hives, requeen all of them. Smaller hives are less defensive. They wouldn't make anymore honey this year, but...

Option three: Kill them.

Option one was really tempting. Let them do their thing where they wouldn't bother anyone. The downside of this was... moving the hive. I've done it before, but those were small, early spring hives that didn't have attitude. I moved them in Cherokee. Now, I have a Subaru wagon with much less room, utterly unsuitable for a two-story hive. Frankly, any enclosed vehicle is unsuitable, though. This isn't just a hive--it's a mean, mean hive.

More later.