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New Video of the Lusby apiary == insanely mad bees

18K views 82 replies 33 participants last post by  beemandan 
#1 ·
Solomon Parker has uploaded to you-tube a 20 min (lots of meaningless filler) snip of insanely defensive bees in the Lusby apiary.
The video is very sad, and very instructive at the same time.

The last time these bees were a subject on the TF forum, Forum participants deKnow and Micheal Bush vociferously denied these Lusby-raised bees were AHB.

I demure, but the parentage looks pretty obvious to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEp9YqUE7kA
 
#30 · (Edited)
Hungry bees getting nervous? I don´t see anything blooming.

https://www.desertmuseum.org/programs/flw_flowering.php

I remember old videos from 2011. It was the same then. Was not Dee´s stock tested?

And I remember she had seasons without a flow and most of the bees still survived. They must be very hardy.

After watching the vid my husband said: if I had taken a video while you work our AMM hybrids, not africanized, once or twice it was like that, bee clouds bumping me and 30 stings into the glove ( white glove, not black like Sols).
They were hot but not dangerous if not opened. The swiss ***** act like that too.

Dees hives are so big and so many of them.
The visitors kept very calm and seem to have no problems. Pretty cool! Must be looking more dangerous than it actually was.
 
#31 ·
Wow, that was terrible. Where was the soap water, or flame throwers !!! I'm New, and been around folks hives with nothing as far as suits ect. Makes ya think some folks are crazy !!! Neglect, concussion, and ignorance all the way through. Sorry , I may be wrong... but some5hing was not good there.
 
#39 ·
I can't say for sure how Sol is doing. He's trying to make a go out of being a TF Guru I think and making money as a beekeeper is secondary. I think he was askiing if he should sell queens for $50 next year... but I don't think anything is special about his bees so I'm not holding my breath. He's also doing podcasts, he's very awkward sounding in a lot of them but the guests typically do most of the talking about their methods etc.. I only know cuz someone signed me into the TF FB group, and I troll their stupid ideas pretty hard most of the time.
 
#41 ·
Good question Olii2d.

I've always admired Dee for being able as a single lady, to run 600 hives. However as you say, she cannot have been able to do much the last couple years.

She was certainly yelling at people, but it must have been incredibly frustrating to get a whole team of people out to help, and all they do is stand around talking, filming, and sniggering. Didn't look like any of them had ever done a days work, or even understood the concept.
 
#45 ·
Been wondering about that for a while Micheal, obviously that day was going to come when she could no longer work bees. Does she have help and the operation is still running and honey being extracted?

Also looks like she needs some new boxes or they just going to start disintegrating.

Re the hives tipped over, with my bees anyway, if I get there more than a few days after they were tipped, the bees have adapted and are just as calm as any other bees, it's also surprising how well a hive can do on it's side sometimes. I think the reason for the aggressive behavior in the video was more about the "beekeepers". Sol was pretty much holding his glove like a red rag to a bull, and with bees like that, once they are infuriated, it's only going down hill. Didn't look like anyone else had a clue how to behave.
 
#46 ·
My treatment-free experimental yard had a couple of unworkable hives of Russian bees. I moved them off by themselves as I could not stand to work them. I cannot get to the yard in winter due to a high water creek. When I came back in spring they had tipped over, the bees were still thriving in their sideways universe. In the spring time their mood was improved, and I tilted them back up, broke them down into smaller units and queened them up with Russian grafts. Unfortunately, the 2nd year of non=treatment did those bees in. Normally the "terminal hives" I treat and move off the mountain, but those meanies just didn't encourage drastic action towards recovery.
 
#49 ·
What you have to understand is that in the desert southwest, bees with that temperament is the default setting. You have to intensely manage to keep it from happening.
 
#50 ·
I was thinking about this video today.
Who with any common curtesy would go into someone else’s apiary, record faults and post it on social media for beekeepers like me to criticize...
Not only did she get zero work from the group, she has every Beekeeper on social media looking into her apiary
 
#51 ·
Agreed, and been thinking the same, there's a rather mocking tone to the video. My feeling is there must have been some falling out between Dee and Sol, for him after holding the video this amount of time, to make it public, unedited.

While i do not buy into everything Dee has ever said, I have a lot of respect for her, she is a hard worker and a deep thinker and has written a lot, and life has thrown her some curve balls but she has carried on where others would have quit.
 
#53 ·
Honestly I hadn't thought of it like that ian, you are right though. When I saw the video, I just thought it was an abandoned yard somebody just forgot. But honestly, being new to all this... I would have never had a crowd like that in there. A chosen few, who would have helped clean it up. Even a little at a time would have been great help. It was scary for me to think about keeping bees at that point, but I'm still here... wanting bees ...lol.
 
#56 ·
I tend to agree with the majority of the above posts. What Jim Lyon has mentioned is probably most important. The surrounding genetics for bees in the areas where Ms. Lusby has her isolated colonies are the "bees on record" so to speak. Obviously the apiaries are in extreme neglect due to lack of management and investment in equipment, and one woman on crutches is hardly the answer. I recall when Mr. Parker used to post on here several years ago and he was clearly a beginner and not a seasoned beekeeper. I know several individuals in the southern part of my state who routinely visit parts of Mexico to work and manage some out-yards. "Manage" being the key word here. There are little resources to re-queen all of their hives every year so they have learned to work with the bees that they have, and there, those bees are the norm. It appears after reading the posts here regarding Dee's operation that what she really needs is an influx of $15-$20,000 for some new equipment, and then a few of our Mexican beekeepers to fix things up in order that at least a honey crop could be secured. Certainly a bus load of camera toting TF beekeepers from the local conference did nothing to assist.
 
#65 ·
This kind of sums up my thoughts as well as others here who have correctly observed that Sol has all but torpedoed one of the pioneers of treatment free beekeeping. Mocking her yards on social media is pretty low in my book, especially when she is unable to work her yards. I mean, who wears BLACK bee keeping gloves to work in Dee's yards anyway and then can not wait to show how many stings he has? Not sure what his motives are, but he has lost any respect I had for him.
 
#58 ·
Right, what we saw was a tourist trip to the zoo, not the zookeepers at work
I see no issue with how she runs her op... while the equipment is ageing, it will likely out last her beekeeping days, and if the bees do fine what is the issue with just visiting the yards a few times a year. Her bees take care of them selfs ,replace there own queens and often laying workers produce viably eggs that get turned in to queens (Thelytoky).. Her methods and stock are suited to her environment and methods...
It may not be clean little boxes in a neat and tidy back yard, its wild west beekeeping on the open range, and TF to boot.
 
#67 ·
You have to experience bees like this to truly understand and frankly I don't think Sol's video really imparts that. To the inexperienced it might seem similar to being in a bee yard with a nice flight on but the best way I can describe this is that you can't carry on a conversation and you can feel the impact of bees hitting your body. I'm a pretty seasoned beekeeper but the first time I dealt with them it kind of took my breath away, made me take a step back and regroup. I'm an old school khaki and tulle veil guy so I suppose I experience it better than most folks who nowadays are wearing bee suits which takes away a lot of the respect that people should have for these bees.
 
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