Scared of AHB? what about cape cod bee's!?!?

[Dannny]

I just watched a discovery channel episode about cape cod bee's that infiltrate hives and start laying clone egg's that hatch to become female bee's that destroy hives. SCARY HUH???

Danny

[Trevor Mansell]

very scary!!!

[magnet-man]

It is the African Cape bee not the Cape Cod bee.

[The Honey House]

Cape Cod bees are all drones. smile.gif

[dickm]

The laying worker syndrome (IMHO) is a leftover facet of this behavior which has some advantage to the cape bee. Anything that propagates the genes is an advantage in nature. Seems to point to the fact that they had a common ancester with our bees. Just rambling.

Dickm

[peggjam]

Good way of taking care of the compitition too!!!

peggjam

[John Russell]

Wern't these being used as a tool to infiltrate and kill AHB colonys?

J

[briancady413]

I understand that Cape bees do infiltrate areas native to AHB, causing losses of honey crops.

[Sundance]

Yes......... The Cape Bee was introduced as a control for AHB. Unfortunatly, like most times we screw with mother nature, it went wrong.

[Bob Harrison]

The cape bee (capensis) is a serious threat to commercial beekeeping in South Africa.

Capensis pseudo queens take over scutellata hives and then the hive fails.

Bees with "capensis like traits" (pseudo queens) have been observed in Arizona at the bee lab by Dr. Gloria De Hoffman (ABF convention 2002) .

[Bob Harrison]

Typo:
Should have been Dr. Gloria Degrandi Hoffman. She is head of the Arizona bee lab.

[naturebee]

Bees with "capensis like traits" (pseudo queens) have been observed in Arizona at the bee lab by Dr. Gloria De Hoffman (ABF convention 2002)

This strain of U.S. honeybees found to have the thelytoky trait was discovered in Dee and Ed Lusby’s bees, reported in Bee Science 1991 Degrandi-Hoffman, Erickson, Lusby.

Although occurring in low very low frequency in European stock, the thelytoky trait is inadvertently selected against by the common beekeeping practices used today. Dee & Ed's emphasis on stress breeding, and the breeding of naturally adapted feral stock is said to have contributed to the development of this trait in her bees.

Thelytoky in a strain of U.S. honey bees
http://beesource.com/pov/lusby/bsmay1991.htm

[Bob Harrison]

Big difference between the thelytoky described by Dee and the cape bee.

Perhaps Robin Mountain will comment. Robin and I had a long talk at the Missouri State Beekeepers meeting at which we were both speakers. Robin believes what they are seeing in Arizona is simply capensis -like and not true capensis.

If true capensis then our whole industry has a serious problem. If only what Dee talks about not a problem.

Capensis areas make even keeping scutellata bees a problem in South Africa.

I am attending Marla Spivak's queen rearing class in Nebraska through Wednesday along with Michael Bush. Will answer questions on this complicated subject (which I have spent many days researching) on my return.

[beegee]

I though the all-drone bees were the Martha's Vineyard and Fire Island bees.... :cool:

[Dick Allen]

How times have changed. Mark Winston, writing in ‘The Biology of the Honey Bee’, worried back in 1987 that the Cape bee was in danger of extinction.

"Female egg laying by workers has not spread from the Cape bee to adjacent populations of A. m. scutellata, although extensive hybridization between the two races appears to be occurring. It has been suggested that the aggressive scutellata workers may kill hybrids which have laying worker characteristics, since these workers appear more queenlike than regular workers; this might explain the failure of parthenogenetic worker production to spread beyond the Cape bee. After examining worker characteristics in hybrid zones where capensis and scutellata overlap, Moritz and Kauhausen (1984) have concluded that capensis is in danger of extinction as a result of extensive hybridization with scutellata and pressure from commercial beekeeping. Loss of this unique race of bees would indeed be tragic, partly because of its potential importance as a genetic reserve of unique traits, and partly because we still do not understand why its characteristics have remained isolated at the tip of South Africa.”

[Curry]

Let's keep them isolated at the tip of South Africa. If they ever got loose here, and could survive, mites wouldn't even get attention anymore...

Does anyone know of another animal (insect) that can propagate without a male (or male genes, eg worms, frogs)? That's scary... clones. I saw the program, it was facinating.