Hello Peter & All,
About sums up AHB when left to requeen on its own and hardly ever actually
worked ( digging into brood nest).

> Swarms and small colonies are manageable enough but established large
> colonies are vicious and nearly impossible to requeen. Apiaries have
> to be sited far from animals and people, rendering them of limited
> usefulness in pollination.

Another point is when you have a large apiary of these bees and you open
one hive it can ( and usually does) riles up the others. Having spent most
of my life around bees I can say for sure that bees can be unpredictable at
times. maybe a skunk was at the hives the night before or some other factor.
The experienced beekeeper is quick to spot mood changes in bees but the
novice might not. Today's bee suits are like armor was to the knights. My
bees are gentile mostly because of the way I work the bees. With AHB going
in blasting huge amounts of smoke and fighting the bees for their honey
would only make AHB more aggressive in my opinion.
>
> Africanized honey bee colonies are abundant in the greater
> Tucson metropolitan area, and requests for colony and swarm
> removals increased from 14 in 1994 to 1613 in 2001.

I would also bet money that many swarms find their way into Arizona
beekeepers hives as bees love to swarm into old bee nests and like the
person which says "the swarm in my bee tree has been in the tree since
Grandpas day" Maybe bees have been in the tree but most likely many
different swarms .
One AHB absconds from Dee's hives and another enters?

AHB entered at Hidalgo Texas I think in 1989? ( think I am right) and by 
1994
*reported* swarm calls in faraway Tucson went from 14 to 1613. Wow! Five
years time. Think what the actual number of swarms might be now fifteen
years later? Hard to believe AHB has been in the U.S. 20 years now.

At least its wonderful our best researcher minds were not correct on their
hypothesis about the range and problems AHB would cause in the U.S.. Please
do not come on the list and say the researchers were right as they were not
and I have little time to argue the point.

Thanks for the post Peter!

bob

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned 
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html