JJB>Water spray is not the approach to take on feisty hives or nasty days, but
   >on a mild tempered nuc on a nice day, works great.
 
Hi All,
 
A follow up on my own information on water treatments to bees includes
information both on calming aggressive and installing packages in
eastern Mexico.
 
In Mexico the largest commercial beekeeper in the world at the time used
many thousands of package bees to make up his hives and nucs. He told me
and others and had pictures of how he submerged the bees in cool well
water before installing them. Today commercial beekeeper who truck
450-500 hives long distances have planned water stops and wet down the
load one or more times on a cross country trip depending on the weather.
Here in California before starting to load out a semi truck for shipment
some beekeepers use commercial orchard sprayers to cool down the hives
prior to loading, it seems to work well and saves a lot of hitchhikers
and the stinging some beekeepers report when loading out big bee yards.
They also use abundant smoke when loading to keep the bees in as they
are moved from the ground to the truck bed.
 
Jim Smith, Yuma Arizona, a long time commercial beekeeper and frequent
explorer south of our boarder who speaks enough Spanish to get around
is the first one who told me about using water to calm aggressive bees.
 
He was with the first official US group of beekeepers and bee scientists
to investigate the "killer bees" in Brazil and astonished all with his
water sports in some bee yards that may have been let us say, prepared
to be extra aggressive for the groups benefit. My long time friend John
Allred, from Madera California, who just this year passed on to the
special place all old beekeepers must go, was also on that committee and
trip and verified this for me.
 
Jim told me he learned the trick from some old Mexican beekeepers from
Northern Mexico whom prided themselves on the aggressive temperament of
their bees that kept man and animal away, and  before anyone spoke
Afrikaner in the America's. Jim told me he used it himself in the arid
desert beekeeping around Yuma with especially aggressive hives, and he
must have had a few as he used much UC Davis stock and also was in on
the super pollinating bee from the USDA that threw some daughters that
would eat the paint off a new bee truck and sting most peoples pocket
shut for just taking the lid off one of their hives...using a smoker.
 
                           ttul Andy-
 
 
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 ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ ... A comely olde man as busie as a bee.