How can a prospective mating yard be sterilized?

[Beemaninsa]

I may catch some flak for asking this but here goes. Lets say one has a prospective mating yard property that extends for miles in all directions. The raw acerage area is in sea of africanization with virtually all feral hives at some stage of africanization. The property is covered with impenetratable thorn brush and catus. Property owner has given permission to terminate feral bees in the area. Is there some type of slow acting, short life bait poision/syrup mix that can be put out to kill the feral colonies? My PMs are working if needed.

[BjornBee]

I'd be learning how to artificial inseminate. Anything less is just fooling yourself, and doomed for failure.

[Velbert]

I have read an article written by Sue Cobey In the American bee Journal she witnessed queen returning from there mating flight and it almost dark time.

What they did was the queen mating nuc was fixed where the queen could not get out to mate just when ever she wanted. Also the drones were keep in also using queen excluders

Then after the normal time when queens naturally mate (this depends on the time of year) say a couple hours before dark both the drone Hives and the mating nuc were opened where both the drones and queens could fly

You take a virgin queen wanting to mate from say 5 days old they will come out when you take away the excluder. I have seen it in my top bar mating Hives

[James Fischer]

Killing bees is easy, just start farming near the land where you want to
kill all colonies.

Seriously, there are a number of different strategies here, but given
that you want to kill all colonies in a wide but overgrown area, you
need poisoned feed.

Something like Pencap-M would be the poison to use, as it does not kill
the forager, but allows the forager to deliver the poisoned "nectar"
back to the colony. The "microencapsulated" nature of the pesticide
is exactly what made it so deadly to bee colonies placed near crops
treated with Pencap-M.

The "nectar" should have a high sugar content, and multiple feeders
should be deployed around the perimeter of the area. After a decent
period of time, visits to the feeders should slowly drop to zero.

[JBJ]

Do you need an extermination permit?

[sierrabees]

Well, you expected flack so here it comes. Anything you put out to kill aftricanized bees is going to kill a lot of other critters including any hybrids that may be attenuating the aggressiveness and offer the only practical hope we have of being able to live with this problem. I wouldn't put a breeding yard in an environment like that unless it was a deliberate attempt to select for gentler hybrids and that would take a pretty hardy soul.

I find the Ideal location for a breeding yard is an area where there practically no suitable habitat for feral bees. If the forage is poor to non-existant and you put in enough hives to make sure the few feral hives around can't compete, you would have to feed and move them out after the breeding season was over, but I would bet the africanized feral bees would choose better pasture. In your part of the world I would look for about 20 square miles of the barest desert around and truck in water and feed to the middle of the area. Put up some kind of shelter from the sun. In my area I keep my drone breeders in an area where the forest is so heavy and the canopy so dense that the feral hives are about two to three per square mile as best I can judge by beelining robbers and counting how many directions they go. I don't have to deal with AHB yet, so I can consider a little feral genetics as a benifit to genetic diversity rather than a harm.

With the Ag Monoculture and massive coorporate farms here in CA, we are learning the hard way how devestating the use of too many chemicals can be. Another fifty years and we should manage to turn the Golden State into the empty usless grey state. During the Russian Revolution they followed the philosophy the "The end justifies the means." Look how they ended.

Anyway, you'll do what you want to do. Haven't met a beek yet who didn't. Just hope you will think about it and try to find an alternative. Good Luck.

[JBJ]

I would agree that the potential for collateral damage is huge, and could affect other native pollinators.

[Bizzybee]

There are a couple of companies out there that make honey bee traps. Much like the yellow jacket trap mind set. I'm not sure what they use for bait, but knowing honey bees that wouldn't be very hard to come up with. Only the trap would have to be quite large compared to the yellow jacket traps. And I would think you would need quite a few judging by the size of the area you are talking about. And of course you wouldn't want your bees on site while that is going on.

I don't know, but given some time to leave traps out long enough (lotta maintenance I would think also) you could make life hard on the ferals in the area? Seems like you would need to leave them open for a bit to get the bees coming to the trap before you "spring it on them"

[TwT]

I think it would be impossible to ride the area from AHB, do like others do, get marked queens and a lot of drone foundation (green frames) and flood the area with your drones. check hives regularly to make sure your queens are still there.... its not 100% but its a start,,,, IMHO!!!

[NW IN Beekeeper]

[Something like Pencap-M would be the poison to use, as it does not kill
the forager, but allows the forager to deliver the poisoned "nectar"
back to the colony. The "microencapsulated" nature of the pesticide
is exactly what made it so deadly to bee colonies placed near crops
treated with Pencap-M.]

That's exactly what you need, something that the bees will put away in their stores!!
That way when you establish colonies in the area and rob those poisoned stores it will kill your bees too!!!

Absolutely foolishness.

Not to mention a totaly violation of the law if you don't have an applicators license (if you did, I doubt you'd be asking these sorts of questions because you'd be school'd to know better.)

There is not a method to sterilize a bee yard.
True isolation is reserved to mid-ocean islands at best.
Bees can fly miles on a 'normal' day, on the wind you can tack a few more on.

If I lived ANYWHERE near you, and I had any ounce proof you were openly poisoning any bees I'd be sure to haul your ***** into court and sue you in any way possible and who ever sold you the product too.

As if CCD, viruses, and soil residual pesticides weren't enough, let's saturate the bee's honey with poisons too!! Good god, where is the decency?

You just might want to consider some methods that use better stewardship toward bees and not a kill 'em and let god sort 'em out mentality.

It would take you longer, but consider saturating the area with desirable genetics. Then you'd improve your yard, and local feral populations too.

Else, unless you instrumental inseminate, you are bailing a sinking cruise ship with a coffee cup.

-Jeff
[IN Licensed Exterminator]

[panubee]

I think Bjorn had the right idea.

It's not clear to me that hybridizing the AHB will actually improve their temperament. Brother Adam observed that hybridization of Carniolans produced more agressive bees. From what I have read the hybridized Africans continue to be hot as well. :confused:

Drones drifting between hives is a commonly recognized trait as well. Even if you kill all AHB colonies, drones, if not mini-swarms could be drifting into your colonies.

One approach might work can be found in the Lusby writings in POV section. Lusby suggests that dark bees--non-Italians, non-AHBs--tend to dominate the breeding pool when temperatures are low, less than 75 degrees. If you conducted your open-mated breeding program at the beginning of the breeding season you could dominate the gene pool with your drones. I can't verify that this method works. We don't have many AHBs in PA, at least not yet.

Instrumental Insemination is your best bet if you want a breeding program is south Texas.

Good luck.

panubee