I'd say to drop the "Africanization" and just call it a combating aggressiveness thread. We need to rid ourselves of this term.

II queens have their issues. It has been proven scientifically that they need diversity in their matings to prosper. One of the reasons bees are in such a sad state of affairs is because of practices like this.

 

I'd say to drop the "Africanization" and just call it a combating aggressiveness thread. We need to rid ourselves of this term.

Wish granted. Search 'Combatting Aggressiveness'

 

There seems to be a real misconception about Texas, it's climate, and it's size. I'm closer to Chicago than I am to El Paso. Our climate in east Texas is more like Louisiana than Austin or anything west of Ft Worth. The areas of Texas that are nearer to Mexico have a much different problem with AHB than east and north Texas. We get an occasional hot hive, and some are down right nasty, but no more than just about anyplace east of here. If they are hot, requeen. It's not that hard.

 

Totally agree. Most of what people say are hot "AHB" are probably just regular ol' bees. They just have gotten used to the comatose in-bred domestic ones. I live 50 miles from the Mexican border and it is the same for us.

I do not believe they have ever detected African genetics in East texas. Way too wet.

 

Long hives can definitely be intimidating - even with domestic bees. There are steps you can take to keep from facing the equivalent of 4 open deeps of bees at once. You can do what I do and get two pieces of burlap drop cloths and only expose the area where you are working. it works very well. The bees don't mind the temporary cloth cover. I also use a lot of sugar water spray to keep them busy licking themselves. My top covers are cut into 3 sections. I never have all open at once.

Longhives can build up an intimidating amount of bees in a very short time.

 

What do yall think about spraying one's suit before going into the hive with diluted vinegar? Too much exposure to the stuff or no?

 

I'm really intrigued by the fact that folks are working with these bees in urban and suburban LA---and many of these keepers are far from experts---no, I don't mean you, Susan.

I gather that these bees can't be all that bad. Or else the public has had a huge change in attitude and tolerance about bees in recent years.

 

It's about 75% hype. They are around, but they are really just really wild bees. In most places they just made the local ferals a little bit wilder and super-hardy.

In my countless hours of looking up scientific papers on the internet and in obscure books, I have found a considerable historical trail that these bees were already here in many places and really are not that new. The Brazilians ones are, but there were others before them. The full Brazilian breed doesn't do well in our temperate climate - and the European in them comes out a lot more, though it tends to be more western European than Mediterranean. Think AMM.

The pre-existing ones were not from experimentation, they were from Spanish monks way back in the old days.

 

Yes, I think Paul has it correctly. The experimentation I know about was with Professor Kerr in Brazil in the '50's with EHB doing poorly in the sultry climate and his idea to import African bees to create a more heat tolerant hybrid.
I do a huge amount of Educational outreach for our club, speaking to churches, municipal authorities, schools, civic groups, and they are uniformly motivated to learn about bees by the media coverage of CCD. It is the number one question they are curious about---"what is all this dying of the bees?"
Number 2 question is, "what about those "killer bees"?" The media needs sensationalism, and the CCD issue gave them a handle. The thing I explain to groups is that the media is doing a poor job explaining the fact that the commercial migratory bees are the population suffering this collapse, not our wild bees. These genetically selected bees forage on crops with varying residues of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, they feed on one pollen/nectar source for days or weeks at a time, they are heavily treated with drugs and chemicals, they are fed HFCS and artificial pollen, they convey these pollutants to the hive to be ingested by brood and queen with deleterious effects, they are subject to the additional immune stress of being trucked all over the country. BUT--the media keeps saying "...it is not clear what is causing CCD" ! Meanwhile, Bayer Crop Science is awarded the exclusive "investigation" contract by the EPA to "discover" what is causing CCD.
So, while the public is seeming to develop a bit more tolerance for the presence of bees (the Ag Commission did a study that found there are a average of 9 feral hives per square mile in the Los Angeles basin---so they are just out there) the public is also seeming to be more concerned with food security and purity issues, so they reach out for information.

 

You left out the part about Dr. Kerr being a political activist against torture, who was a victim of political slander by the Brazilian government - which the whole AHB thing carries on, right or wrong. And also that there are many institutions out there who have a vested interest in seeing the bees dead for profit, such as the petrochemical insecticide and pest control industry. What better than to paint them all as bad so an economy based on getting rid of them can be created.

So yeah, they can be bad, but so could AMM when they were around in large numbers. They are the ultimate underdog.

 

"The pre-existing ones were not from experimentation, they were from Spanish monks way back in the old days."

I still think that Cortez (himself a beekeeper) brought those bees over to New Spain in the early 1500s, before other Europeans.

I've also just learned that there is a scutellata component in the genetics of Bee Weavers. Although they say it isn't a large one.

 

I did not know this about Kerr, but I am also only 2 years into bees, so there is a lot to learn. The politics of bee breeding and American government breeding programs that distributed experimental strains are subjects I have only just begun to explore.

 

Once you start seriously researching the politics and origin of these bees, it will blow your mind. There are a lot of misconceptions out there masquerading as facts.

Kerr was persecuted by the Brazilian government for his political activism. It was they who coined the term "killer bees" and tried to tie him to a lurid story of how he was breeding genetically altered bees to disrupt civilization, or some BS like that. What Dr. Kerr is guilty of is basically being sloppy. Those bees that got loose were unbred wild bees straight from Africa. There were no feral bees at the time in tropical South or Central America, so they filled the niche and moved northwards. They are basically wild African bees. As they moved up they encountered regular honeybees and absorbed their genetics so that they could adapt to more temperate regions. So yeah, we have them, but they aren't really what has been advertised. And we also had several other pre-existing flavors of African before they got here (AMI, Iberian, etc). So they really aren't much more than a nuisance in actuality. Sort of comparable to the old days when AMM was prevalent in the wild woods.

I just re-queen anything that is overly defensive or runny on the comb. If you pull out a comb and the bees drip off in clumps, they gotta' go. That is mostly how we find them up here. Occasionally they can be defensive too, but it is real variable.

And as far as beeweavers go, they pretty much have all the African breeds mixed in if they truly are Buckfast in origin. I have 4 hives of them and they seem awful similar to a well bred version of the wild bees you get in my region. I suspect they are just open mated survivors - which in my opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. I think that is what is going to save the beekeeping world. The designer breeds we use for pollination surely are not.

 

Paul, in your research, have you come across any indications that the Beeweaver strain will do well, or can be adapted to, northern climates?

 

There are people on this board that keep them as far north as New York. I keep them at 7500' in the Rockies - gets pretty cold and snowy up here. **** cold in fact.

I have also found one of the biggest myths of African genetics is that they can't survive cold. That' total hogwash in my experience. They survive here plenty well, and it gets darn cold - sometimes down to -30. I think the biggest factor in bees like this not migrating North is that it really is not the climate they are best adapted to - sort of like why they didn't migrate East of Texas.

Go down to South America where they are full blown Scutellata and I am sure those bees won't survive the Winter. They have probably never even seen a Winter.

 

Designer breeds of dogs, roses, or any other human valued hybrid organism is a anachronism in Nature. Invariably, the selected genetics ends up eliminating advantageous and vigorous traits in service to the narrow range of human perceived values. This is the idea that bothers me most about the breeding programs, the dollars they attract and the powerful industries that cater to that system. This is your "what is going to save the beekeeping world" ---or any other world, for that matter. I am sick to death of hearing about the vaunted technological fixes that are going to deliver us from our hubris. The word biomimicry is being used in some scientific circles to direct attention to the way the natural world actually works, not the way we wish it would work.
As to the bees we use here, they are easy to keep, don't need fussing and feeding, and act like bees---not zom-bees. I am not convinced of the utility of feeding commercial honey hives great quantities of syrup and fake pollen in order for them to turn it into honey, but that is the model urged by folks doing honey production on the Calfifornia coast. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Conventional club keepers are urged this is the "right method" also.

 

>have you come across any indications that the Beeweaver strain will do well, or can be adapted to, northern climates?

I had Weaver Buckfasts in Western Nebraska (the panhandle) from the mid 70's to the mid 80's (two winters it was -40 F and one of those it was -40 F every night for a month). I also had them in the late 80's in Laramie at 7,200 ft and a winter that was also -40 F for a week or more and in Eastern Nebraska in the late 90's up to 2001. Wintering was not an issue other than Varroa issues...