Technique for handling Africanized honeybees

[barry42001]

I an in sw Florida  by Ft. Myers. All bees are or in short order will be africanized.  I've tried lightly smoking waiting 3 4 minutes. The effects don't last long enough to do a thorough examination.  Lol I had know idea bees have enough space between frames to fly up I don't mean crawl up to the top of frame and then fly I mean flying up from inbetween the frames. Never saw that before  but too many times after that.  I smoked em up good  finished re assembling the hive . Hundreds if bees bouncing off veil getting stung on the forehead through the headband. Dozens of stings through the gloves.  Where ever suit was pulled tight I was stung.  Hive reassembled  the cloud followed me for over 180 yards still bouncing of veil
And this isn't unusual..
So aside from raid what calms then down long enough to work them.

[Jen]

Hi Barry, been a long time...

My first question is: do you have just this one hive? or do you have others as well?

[iddee]

""So aside from raid what calms then down long enough to work them.""

Sorta like mating porcupines....  VERY CAREFULLY   

[barry42001]

Working for a small commercial company  uses palletized hives  something entirely new to me. They are 4 x 4 so you smoke one better smoke them all.

[Bakersdozen]

I was going to suggest requeening with Italian queens, but if they are not your bees that won't work.  I feel your pain.

[Wandering Man]

We live in the Mid-Coast area of Texas, very close to the entry place of the AFB, and have a lot of AFB genetics in our area.

We haven't found a way to calm them down.  We wear full suits when dealing with our aggressive hives, make sure all the zippers are pulled up tight and cover spaces where the zippers meet with duct tape.  I wear a short-brimmed hat under the hooded veil (fencing-type hood) to keep the wind from blowing the netting against my face.  I quit using goat skin gloves because the leather isn't thick enough.  Even with cowhide the bees will sometimes catch my on the first joint of the thumb when I'm lifting something.

I've heard thick nitrile gloves work well to prevent bee stings, but I've been unwilling to experiment with those, incase our defensive bees didn't get the memo.

As Baker's suggested, requeening is usually the best way to deal with them, but even then you can end up with an aggressive hive.  We've requeened all of our hives, but still have one that is really aggressive.  I suspect the queen has either been supplanted by a feral queen, or may have mated with local stock before we got her.  I've heard that sometimes a feral swarm will come into a hive and take over.

[Mikey N.C.]

Woman, I believe what your talking about is usurpation.
They say it's not that uncommon with AFBees. Some say that you smoke entrance heavy , wait 8-10 mins. pop inner cover smoke heavy close inner cover of course covering hole in cover. Wait 5 mins. Now if this works I don't know. Also if you read about beekeeping in Africa , in a certain region where Brother Adam went they heft the logs that are hollowed out and sawed in too, making 2 halves long way, 1 end blocked off. That's where Brother Adam got the black queens. But they use these as swarm traps, as AFBees tend to migrate with nectar flows, so by using the swarm traps they have less usurpation.

[Mikey N.C.]

Wandering man , I'm guessing it was spelling checked

[Wandering Man]

usurpation

Yes, that’s the right word.

woman

nope, not the right word.

 

[tecumseh]

first a couple of question... what are the current condition in Southwest Florida (Ft Myers area) and have you actually had a sample of the angry bees checked as to their DNA origin (not morphogenic id)?

 a 4 way pallet will make the situation worst since any check on one hive will agitate the other 3.  If the hive is africanized without breaking the hive down into some smaller size introducing a non africanized mated queen will be difficult.  Cells work better but then you have the problem of just another africanized-european queen.

looking for certified (maternal DNA) hives here was much more difficult than most here (including myself) would have thought... turns out a vast majority of so called 'africanized hives' were a certain mix of 2 European lines and not africanized at all.  Lab testing (again a DNA type test) gives you more certainty in what you are dealing with...

Good luck..

[Wandering Man]

first a couple of question... what are the current condition in Southwest Florida (Ft Myers area) and have you actually had a sample of the angry bees checked as to their DNA origin (not morphogenic id)?

 a 4 way pallet will make the situation worst since any check on one hive will agitate the other 3.  If the hive is africanized without breaking the hive down into some smaller size introducing a non africanized mated queen will be difficult.  Cells work better but then you have the problem of just another africanized-european queen.

looking for certified (maternal DNA) hives here was much more difficult than most here (including myself) would have thought... turns out a vast majority of so called 'africanized hives' were a certain mix of 2 European lines and not africanized at all.  Lab testing (again a DNA type test) gives you more certainty in what you are dealing with...

Good luck..

Tec,  Do you think the increase in aggression across genetics in Texas is a sign of adaptive behavior?  A response to mites, etc?

[tecumseh]

It appears (at least here in Central Texas) 90 % of samples were actually a misidentification of africanized bees based on NO lab genetic test.  most all were id as a L (Italian) X O (occidental < caucasian/carni) cross. The new Apiary Inspector (Mary) kind of gave me a heads up about this tendency to tag all hives with defensive tendencies as africanized... I suspected (when we were collecting the samples) that lack of available food resources also played into their tendency to be a bit nasty.

When we finally did located 8 hives that showed to be africanized (all on a friend of mine from my college days) on the material side (we collected larvae for queen grafts and drone semen for II purposes) the experience was definitely anticlimatic.  I could have worked those without gloves and with little smoke... < ps one thing I did do was I carried a bit of canvas and kept all exposed frames covered as we dug thru the hives for frames of young larvae and when we caught drones..
   

[barry42001]

The man i work for no scientifically oriented at all. All about what gets a few dollars. I try to explain to him bee biology he explains to me it costs money. So first question. Are the truly africanized  the cell building is much smalker then any European bee cell I've ever had ( Italian, Russian).their behavior on the comb is to run boiling off the corner in little balls so have to stay over hive or have bees in the grass around your feet. The smoking technique was in a email from malcolm  a professor in bee biology. He said lightly smoke entrance. Wait 3 to 5 minutes. Open the hive lightly smoke again. This buys you about 5 minutes of working time. After that they will recover their defensiveness. That one time was stung through headbandseveral timez, through those heavy ventilated suit the induce heat exhaustion  lol where ever the suit pulls tight. Of course i wear goatskin gloves and they go right through them. Back of neck. And of course the cloud that follows you. Lol talk about disconcerting had a few get inside veil before i figured out where. One crawled inside my ear canal.  Was making strangest sounds I've never heard  didn't know bees could do that.   No that one didn't stingother one did on cheek.all told perhaps 30 stings in one day. Benadryl  and nausea  for few days.

[Wandering Man]

Barry, I hope you are able to find another beekeeper to work for. No employer should ever put profit above the safety of his employees.

[Wandering Man]

Seems we still have one aggressive hive.  I took this video today.  We were checking to make sure we were queen-right.  I never found young larvae, but saw lots of capped larvae and no queen cells.

That's 3Reds at the hive and my right hand.  She got a couple of stings through her goat-skin gloves.  I got three through my cowhide gloves.  I also had the pleasure of getting two girls crawling up my pants leg for the first time.  Both left me kisses just above the knee.

We put the hive back together and left without searching for young larvae.  I think we'll have to go back in, but I'll be wearing a full suit and maybe two pairs of gloves.

[Mikey N.C.]

Wow, don't think I'd want any of that ! Are you smoking yourself good? Pants,gloves ECT.

[Wandering Man]

Are you smoking yourself good? Pants,gloves ECT.

Yep!  I take a break every now and then to reapply the smoke, although I'm not sure but what the smoke agitates them more.

[Jen]

Wman! That is ridiculous! In twelve years I have had two hives like that. I requeened, nothing worked. Story short, I got the shopvac out and sucked them all up and plugged up the hose. Walked away brushing off my gloves and got on with life. What a relief! Not regrets!

[Wandering Man]

Wman! That is ridiculous! In twelve years I have had two hives like that. I requeened, nothing worked. Story short, I got the shopvac out and sucked them all up and plugged up the hose. Walked away brushing off my gloves and got on with life. What a relief! Not regrets!

This hive has been a struggle, Jen. 

We replaced the queen in late March or early April.  We thought it might be calming down, but it never really did.  I know the new queen was released because we saw her a week after introducing her.  But I wonder if she was eventually killed and replaced by the colony, or if the whole hive had been usurped by a marauding band of delinquent bees.  In any event, I think we need to try to get a new queen in there again.