Re: AHBs in GA - Man dead
Countryboy,
All the AHB swarms I've ever encountered in my vicinity have been extremely defensive. While they are still in the air, having just been issued, after they first cluster on a stationary object, and basically always. I hived many swarms like this near my home (I never managed to keep one in hive, unless they chose to go there on their own). To see if I could do it, I once retrieved a basket ball sized swarm, without using a veil, from about twenty-five miles away, in the heart of town. They had just clustered on a low bush, about three feet high. I knocked them into a deep 5-frame nuc which had its bottom side screened. I received about a dozen stings, mostly on my face, ears, and neck, but some on my arms, legs, and hands. I had two empty combs in the box with them. I fed them and kept them confined to the nuc for about four days. On the day I gave them an entrance I confirmed that their queen was there, and that she had laid at least one frame of eggs, some of which, had begun to hatch. The next morning I noticed very little activity around their entrance and discovered that they had absconded, leaving behind the eggs and just hatched larva. A couple of days later I discovered that this swarm had taken over another nuc, three nucs over from where I had them. They had ousted the virgin queen and had made this broodless nuc their own. I left them alone for a few months, until I was absolutely certain of the undesirable behavior (their true "personality"), then I killed their queen and replaced her with a cultured queen cell in a cell protector.
honeyshack,
Supposing your scenario is valid. How likely are you to maintain and even breed from a colony that exhibits undesirable traits, no matter what their geographic origins are? If you received an undesirable colony from Nova Scotia, Canada, would you be more likely to tolerate their bad behaviors than you would be if they were shipped to you from Georgia, U.S.A. ?
I'm here in Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. I import queens from several queen breeders. I breed from them, the daughters are open mated. I grow nucs from these open mated daughter queens. If any of them produce colonies with undesirable traits - I promptly drop those queens into a jar of everclear and replace them with another cultured queen cell. It doesn't matter to me where they obtained their undesirable traits --> they aren't here any more.