I am new here and new to beekeeping (I will have my first package in a week). I know I may be getting the cart ahead of the horse, but I really think it would be great if I could trap or catch a swarm to potentially start a second hive. However, I have a bit of an issue. I live in one of the two counties in the state of Georgia that have documented presence of Africanized bees (AHB). To my knowledge, AHB were detected in the state about 3 years ago. I have a lot of places that I could hang traps and I feel confident that I will be hearing about swarms. My question is should I mess with them at all given AHB is known to be in the area. I have relatives in TN, so I may be better of to wait on trying to trap until next spring. Thanks much for your advice.
Don't let the fact that AHBs are around stop you- just be careful. Never attempt to work feral bees without a full bee suit and smoker. Make sure no one is within about 300 yards when you try to capture/retrieve them. Have a beeyard away from people to place them in.
Odds are you will see far more EHB than AHB ferals.
For the past 20 plus years I've been in the heart of AHB country. I used to try hiving wild swarms around my area - I could rarely keep one hived, even if I gave them open brood. This happened many dozens of times. I haven't tried that recently, but I frequently have wild swarms, from outside my apiary come settle in some of my empty gear. I let them, then kill their queens and replace her with my cultured queen cells - works every time.
BTW - AHB swarms are about as feisty as a typical EHB established colony. They are not docile like EHB swarms usually are.
Thanks for your advice. I think I will build swarm traps today. I had wondered about requeening. I suppose if I thought the swarm was to aggressive, I could just give them a new (bred) queen.
Welcome to beekeeping, this is my forth year keeping bees. I live about the same distance from the port of savannah that you do. Africanized bees are know to enter the U.S. by ship. I started with purchased bees, but I am having much better survival rates now after catching swarms and doing cut outs. I have even taken several virgin queens to the middle of fort stewart [ 280,000 acres] and left them to mate with feral bees, I would then bring them back and use them for future breeding purposes. I only had one colony from a swarm that was exceptionly aggresive. I moved the hive to another property where it was alone and feed them constantly for a few weeks until they swarmed and the old queen went elsewhere, after a few weeks they calmed down and turned out to be my best producers. Good luck with the bees.
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