Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Bee News => Topic started by: iddee on November 01, 2015, 06:39:52 pm
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http://www.aol.com/article/2015/11/01/6-people-sent-to-hospital-after-bee-attack-in-arizona/21257062/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl3|sec3_lnk3%26pLid%3D-923001703
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Very sorry to hear about the misery these vicious bees caused. It is so disappointing to know I may be dealing with AHBs in my quest to get started in beekeeping again by catching swarms in the Phoenix area next spring. Maybe I will have to avoid swarm catching and try to do some cutouts instead. That way I should find out right away if I'm trying to collect nasty mean bees. Either that, or I'll have to watch any colonies from collected swarms very closely for aggressive behavior, and deal with them quickly.
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From what I have read African bees will invade and take over colonies that were headed by European queens. So marking the queens becomes necessary to identity if the introduced queen has been replaced. Requeening colonies that have African bees is a lot harder to get the queen accepted and the supersedure rate on introduced European queens is quite high. If you are in an isolated area at a higher elevation that is still free of the African bees, You may be better off ordering packages from a known clean source than taking the chance of introducing them into your area.
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This is interesting Apis, because I've had queen trouble this year, so many supercedures.
To date, I know for sure that my one nuc is friendly, and one of my hives is still friendly with the queen I bought in early summer. I have two hives left to check.
Early this summer I got so fed up with one of my hives, nothing worked to calm them down, and those methods were suggested here on the forum. One day, I had had it and grabbed the shop vac and sucked every last one of them up and I don't regret it for one minute.
But I'm in upper California, I haven't heard or read yet anything pertaining to AHB's. Please No!