This is for you folks down south - Are you seeing your colonies africanize after having (supposedly) handreared queens fly out and mate w/ drones from africanized colonies? Wouldn't this tend to produce a colony that had traits of africanized bees? Guess it makes me wonder how much to "trust" queens or packages I might get from the south since we do not (as yet anyway) have the africanized bees this far North (WA state)...
I've seen it and I'm in Nebraska. The USDA was shipping Africanized queens all over the US from 1947 to 1961. There are bound to be many of them around everywhere for the last 50 years or more.
Hi,
African genetics been in the US population since around 1866. There are many african races and most are already in the gene pool. It is best to embrace the african stocks rather than fight them as its a losing propostion. At least thats how I feel. I believe if the so called AHB had all the selection that has been given commercial stock you'd find they are just fine. This isn't to says there aren't hot colonies but there EHB colonies that can give AHB's a run for there money often feral black that have been on there own whith out any breeding to docile them. No attention is given to african stocks that are gentle only the hot ones, why is that?
Clay
I agree there have always been "hot" bees. And for a very long time there have been African genes. I'm not sure they are directly related. True the USDA could never seem to breed the visciousness out of the Africanized bees for more than a couple of generations, but as you say, there have always been "hot" bees. There have been court cases involving horses etc. being stung to death for centuries. They didn't have the news media we have.
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