Peter Borst:



> But it isn't the temperament that is the worst feature
> of Africans, .........but the fact that they swarm themselves silly and don't make enough honey to pay the bills. Unless you live in a hut or have some other source of income aside from honey or pollination fees. 

Reply:
Geeh Peter, with Housel Positioning they don't swarm that much. Even with Dean and Ramona here with me ketching swarms (less then 10-12 or so in 30 yards gone thru first round early). Haven't seen any since in the field, though I sure hope more show up. But I don't live in a hut and I do work bees full time, saving on good years to carry thru the bad years (but that is common in farming/ranching). You have to learn to manage the farm to cover all things needed doing what one has to for the way you choose to live. For me it's clean sustainable beekeeping with zero treatments and no artificial feeds.


continuing: 
> By the way, there is a yard of 24 hives a couple hundred
> yards from my house. People walk past it every day with their dogs and
> babies. No one has ever been bothered by those bees.


Reply:
Geeh up until I/we moved from Tucson in 2005 and reset up the headquarters here in Moyza, I/we kept about that number or more in the center of Tucson with a million people or so all around. Tucson isn't a little old town you know.

 Even out on the ranches, the cattle and horses and sheep graze right up to the hives, with no problems. Right now with another fire burning now over 2,000 acres again where fire was with Kitt Peak area my hives are doing okay and not swarming away ahead of the fire (though 2 yards are surrounded with flames), and I had just finished working them up for production for mainflow starting for our acacia (mesquite/catsclaw). So will be interesting to see if I have to feed them, or they can fly past the fire area of 2,000 plus acres and get enough foraging over next couple of months with major brooding having to now be going on to feed let alone make a crop. But then those tiny, swarming AHBs shouldn't be able to do that..........so I guess we shall see what the year now brings......Would be nice they end up doing okay and I even extract some just to stick it sorta!,,,for who would want bees like that?


Dee A. Lusby


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