First, this is a wonderful thing that you are doing! Thank you for your goodwill towards others.

How do you keep your hives? Are you able to manipulate and inspect the combs and locate the queens?

I am new to this beekeeping world and from what I understand you can introduce queens from other (calmer) sources into your apiary either by re-queening or making up splits. When those hives create new queens they will interbreed with yours and other feral drones passing on both good and bad traits.
Another alternative is for you to work with your preferred calmest and gentlest hives and making splits with frames of eggs from those hives. By allowing them to make their own queens you will at least be able to pass on the traits from your preferred hives. I am sure you can get more sound and experienced advice here.
Those are just my thoughts. Good luck!

 

In my opinion feralness is overrated. I don't know any other part of agriculture that uses or promotes the assumed beneficial aspects of an unmanaged population of livestock. Why is this so in beekeeping? Is it because of the predominance of persons who keep bees as pets?

 

I don't know any other part of agriculture that uses or promotes the assumed beneficial aspects of an unmanaged population of livestock. Why is this so in beekeeping?

Because feral bees survive without treatment. And it seems that survival is one of the most important traits among the group here. Bees aren't standard livestock. They are wild animals. They need natural selection.

I prefer to facilitate it myself, others prefer to leave it to breeders.

 

Buy a good gentle queen ,introduce her to your hottest hive or do a split.Then when the others supersede hopefully they breed with the drones from the one you replaced the queen in.

 

I'd say there is value in a ferral colony, especially if you attempts to raise package bees shipped in from other areas have failed. Your local ferral hive can have traits that perform better in your region. This can even include resistance to certain parasites, climate and even levels of drought. However, these traits can also include certain non-desireable temperments and even as you mentioned - high drone production. I would say that the drone issue is probably due to a poorly mated queen though.

No doubt - I would requeen with a mated queen from a well known queen producer.

I collect swarms and have done several cut-outs, and I have experienced some fairly aggressive colonies. I will not bring aggressive bees to my bee yards. The cut-outs that I do, tend to establish themselves very quickly, but swarms go a bit slower. I have about a 90% success rate. Once they have filled a 5 frame nuc, I requeen them. The 10% losses are due to hive beetles on cut-outs or immediate re-swarming on swarm captures.

 

My plan was to find and kill the queens, split the hives into 6 with new good quality queens. My dilemma is what kind of breed to introduce so that the offspring will benefit from both genetic traits. High productivity is not my goal, my goal is to introduce a trade the older kids can learn and benefit from. I run some hives in New Mexico with some Survivor Hygienic queens –this is the option I like, but would like to get the advice from the most knowledgeable gentlebeeks on this forum. The climatic and topography of the Chihuahua’s canyons and the New Mexico high mountains are just about the same. I will be introducing 50 new hives at the orphanage land, so that the kids have the needed exposure of a good size operation and perhaps, make some money to support the orphanage and give a cash incentive to the older kids. The new 50 hives I am bringing from 300 miles away are Italian/ Survivor stock. The elevation at the orphanage is 7000 to 8500 feet, with plenty of wild flowers and hardly any one uses pesticides on those valleys, not because they are trying to be “organic”; it’s just because they cannot afford any. Plenty of free ranges with lots of multiple color flowers cover the landscape during the summer. We plant corn, beans, strawberry, squash, tomato, wheat, oats, and have 500 apple trees (3 years old) and are on a continuous drive for self sufficiency. The bees, will be just another step towards the self supporting efforts and occupational therapy. My grandfather -the one I inherited the love for bees from, used to call occupational therapy something else; "Those who do not work; shall not eat!" -kind of the same principle, I shall add.

 

Micha -
I'm with you on replacing the queens, especially if you have kids working with them. You could save some ferral hives if they are manageable, so that the kids can see first hand the different traits. I think what your doing is brilliant. Does your program have much of a structure yet? Can the kids progress - will they have different responsibilities as they get older? Eventually you could have a queen rearing program for the older kids, so they can requeen every year without purchasing them.
http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/queenrear.html Glenn Apiaries has an excellent site -


-JP

 

I still work in the USA full time, and do my volunteer work full time also, but in two years –God willing, I will quit my job with the army corps of engineers, and will dedicate the last of my years serving orphans and abandoned old people in Mexico. I been planning and making arrangements for it, for the last 5 years. I will teach the kids trades so that they are productive- we already do, do not think otherwise, but I have the skills that may facilitate a way better program for all.
The population is mostly Tarahumara and Pima Indian at the orphanage. They are hard working and fearless when working with animals. They work cows, pigs and sheep also. We specialize in abused, abandoned, neglected or drug addicted children, so, when they get our care, they are forever grateful. We already have teachers, lawyers, business managers and more, that used to be at our places.

 

Get a hive with known bees that are gentle. Requeen hot hives with cells from this gentle hive. They will open mate with the feral hives. Continue to requeen hot hives with cells from a gentle hive.

Or just wear lots of armor.

 

Micha I was recent interested in your post here regarding your hives and nucs for sale. It appears you have not been involved in raising bees that long. I was wondering how you went from 3 hives in January 2011, to over 100 hives now in Mexico. In addition you manage to keep 375 hives in New Mexico. Please explain what line of genetics you have managed to incorporate in your bees here and in Mexico. I would think that keeping 100 hives of africanized bees at an orphanage would be quite a task. Kindly let me know about your bees for sale.

 

Given your location; what is the likely hood these feral hives are AHB? From what I read AHB hives are extremely hard to requeen, so that may not even be an option.

 

RiskyBizz,

Ah… God Bless America, land of the free, the entrepreneurial, and capitalism; please allow me to explain.
I bought many hives, lots of equipment, made splits, caught lots of swarms, bought more hives, made more splits, almost no free time for leisure in 2 years, lots of risk, open wallet, drive an old truck, more splits, almost no honey for the main focus was bee production, more work and work with no wages on the horizon, investment -without return on hand, more work and work; that’s how you get there.
The 100 hives in Mexico have turned into 48 now; the rest are sold. Out of the 48 hives, only 14 remain with aggressive hives- this are the most productive hives I have, the ones without treatment and the ones I hardly open for anything other than to collect resources. The orphanage owns 58 acres, so, those aggressive ladies are far from the kids. I will be making some 30 nucs out of the 14 with queens bought in Cuernavaca, Morelos Mexico - farewell to the Africanized Queens! Their blood line started with queens bought from Brother Adam -1950’s?, and they still produce a gentle and productive bee. The rest of the queens I have are Sunkist Cordovian from Russell’s, Bob Harvey’s Italian, lots of feral survivor bees, and a few Zia Rio Grande Survivor. Their daughters are coming up nice and productive, I just do not know what they are anymore; I just call them Micha Queens.
I just sold out this morning. There is a possibility that I may have someone cancel an order in a few weeks - he just lost his job. Contact me at michas honey house in facebook in a few weeks if you need some of my hives, or if you want to drive south, you are welcome to come and visit.

 

I see a problem with requeening. The bees have AHB traits because that is what has taken over the gene pool. Introducing a gentle queen is only going to get overrun by what is in the area. The only thing I can think of doing is do a lot of splits choose the gentler hives and recombine from what you have. The colonies have to survive to pass on the gentler gene.

 

Acebird,

I agree, if you are not careful, you just waste queens -I know, but do not ask me why I know.
What I have done, is make the colonies orphan for 3 to 5 days, go and take each frame and cut the queen cells you find. Split into nucs. I then cage the queen on a 3"x3" section of emerging bees with some loose candy tubes I make out of 3/8" clear plastic tubing. Open up the cage in a week or so. This is the best way I know that works best with africanized ladies. By re-queening early on like I am doing at the 3rd or 4th week of February, the cluster is small and it is still a little cold up in the mountain, and easier to handle.

 

Because feral bees survive without treatment.

This is baloney.

 

This is baloney.

Tell it to my treatment-free feral swarms which have survived not one year, but several. Add to that the fact that I keep catching those swarms year after year in the same place, cast from what I assume is the same tiny tree cavity somewhere out in the sticks around here.

 

>This is baloney.

waddya mean?

 

If feral bees have the genetic traits to survive and thrive without treatments from humans doesn't that make them valuable? All beekeepers would like to have that in their bees. We could go back to the days of pre-varroa.

 

Micha -
Are you sure those bees are AHB? Have you sent them off to have them looked at? It gets pretty cold up in those mountains at night doesn't it?
Are the guard bees coming after you 50 yds from the hive?
If they really are AHB... then I bet they are going to be tough to requeen.
We have a lot of mean bees.. but usually they are our best hives. Guess most people would not want to work our bees... but we are used to it. It seems to me that a lot of the mean bees.... are just hives with a lot of bees, but that's just my opinion.
I realize - given your location - that your bees are most likely AHB.... but I was just curious.

 

that's what i was thinking, assuming the feral colony has survived on it's own through at least a winter or two.

most of the bees i started with last year were raised from such feral stock, i'll let you know how they do.

 

According to Peter Loring Boarst, numerous "survivor" hives that where found in remote areas failed quickly when moved into a commercial apiary. There appears to be more at play here than meets the eye.

On the other hand, we had a swarm land on the back porch in some old equipment many years ago. They where smaller and all black, and could winter in a very small cluster.

So my conclusion is there is no conclusion. Keep an open mind as to what any bee's potential is.

Crazy Roland

 

Keep an open mind as to what any bee's potential is.

Crazy Roland

Right on CR. And don't automatically assume special traits to a swarm or "feral" colony, just because you found them in a tree or side of a house. Assuming they are better than what you have or can buy is just that, an assumption. Not a fact.

 

If the idea is to retain some of the characteristics of the current bees, why not approach the introduction of new genetics from the other side. First bring a number of your "nice" hives into the area but a short distance away and induce production of drones in those hives. Then cause some hives to be queenless, say by making walkaway splits. If the queens from those hives mate with your "nice" drones their offspring will be partly feral and partly "nice". Then you select for the characteristics you want to keep and split the hives with those characteristics again. This will be a time consuming effort. If you requeen with a mated queen from someplace else you are totally replacing the genetics of the hive and within a few weeks the feral genetics are gone. As usual I admit that I know only what I have read. I welcome and hope for comments from others.
Bill

 

>Keep an open mind as to what any bee's potential is.

agreed roland, and i do. the bee producer from whom i aquired these has done pretty well with them for several years now, and absolutely no treatments. time will tell as far as my experience with them.

that's a very interesting situation that you have there micha. the young folks that you are getting involved are fortunate to have you. hopefully you can end up with a more docile strain, that continues to be very productive.

 

hpm,

I have not send them to get tested, but they do follow you more than 150 yards sometimes in great numbers!
I had to get on the truck one day, with full armor, windows open, drive a few miles and only then, I got rid of them girls.
I will test them soon.

 

squarepeg,

I am the fortunate one.

 

amen.

 

mark, this bee raiser i mentioned had his eye on about a half dozen feral colonies in the woods near his home for years. assuming these colonies were not some that simply moved in to a feral dead out, and they had been self sustaining without treatment, would that not bode for good genetics? i do understand yours and roland's point about no guarantees.

 

Maybe, maybe not. I just don't think there is necassarily anything special about these bees. What happens to them when they are hived? How long do they live afterwards? Before I would extoll the virtues of these bees I would want to see them survive a cpl of years in hives. And other characteristics noted as well. There's more to breeding characteristcs than survival.

Question: How does your friend know if the bees in the trees survived the winters and didn't just get reoccupied every Spring? Also, a characteristic of bee trees which benefits their survivability is swarming. They will throw off swarms in the Spring, should they survive the Winter, and then they will also swarm later in the Summer and/or Fall. Which helps interrupt the Varroa life cycle.