At 10:46 PM 10/30/97 -0600, Marlin (SCOTT) Kline wrote:
 
>I am not aware of what your statement is suppose to imply?"Afro Bee
Slash"/Good Citizen/Quarantine Boss/I simply thought I was doing the
correct procedure as far as having the Bees tested for Africanization?
 
Hello Scott,
 
'Water under de bridge, please do let us know how it turns out for you. I
expect that you will still have your aggressive hives and have to do what
the rest of us do when we find aggressive hives and that is to learn to
live with them or re-queen them next spring if they survive the winter. The
real cost to check one hive for African genes can be over $100.00 per test
and the results even then will not have anything to do with any bees being
aggressive or not as that test has no yet been invented.
 
>I contacted the Dept. Of Agriculture and they were in no hurry to inspect
the >hive, they were in a hurry for me to send samples of the Bees. I don't
know if >you are implying that I should just burn the colonie or explain
what I am >missing here.?
 
Aggressive hives are a normal everyday occurrence in honeybees. Just the
day to day change in the weather can cause any hive to become more
aggressive for a few hours or days. The normal thing to do is to re-queen
any hive that is too aggressive to handle and that is what I would advise
you to do. Turning yourself into the bee police will not change the temper
of your hives but it could cause a lot of unnecessary grief for yourself
and neighboring beekeepers if they were to decide to take action to relieve
you of your problem bees and to protect your neighbors from bad seed from
your bees by taking their's too.
I don't know what plans your state has for the "Afro Bees" and they may be
like what we have in California which is a "secret quarantine" plan based
on the number of bee caused deaths per week or month. So far the plan is so
secret that no one really knows what it is, but we do know it changes from
day to day like the weather. Right now it seems that California has
acknowledge that we are infested with African Bees and thats it..end of
story. Interesting that only feral hives are being tested now.<G> Of course
the last time we tested large numbers of hivebees we did find out that if
you check any one hive enough times over a period of months it will turn up
positive for African bees even if the queen was of the best Northern
California breeding stock.
 
>I did send samples to the state IL.,the beekeeper as the state quoted
called >me and said if I was sending in samples that there was no reason
for him to >inspect the hive and he called after the state explained that
he would not be >calling me,one reason was he is 80 miles away.
 
Yeah, and that would also cause some real work and maybe even some sweat
and bee stings, always much easier to send them to the lab to see if they
measure up using the same science used in Germany during WW II to identify
those undesirables among us, and if they do then comes the genetic tests
not good enough to convict OJ, but for sure has caused a lot of beekeepers
real grief.
 
>But I am curious to the quarantine boss with star and gun comment.
 
Some bee cops dress up like Mexican generals, with big shinny badges,
uniforms and cowboy hat and boots, Arizona has uniforms that few would ever
been seen in other then when ordered to wear it at a official function. I
am not sure if any have the right to pack iron yet but every few years an
attempt is made to give them that power in our California state legislature
which as so far turned them down. Can't you see some poor beekeeper being
shot to death because he would not open his hives to a armed bee cop? But
then beekeepers do have the right to go armed and many do now, so the bee
cops say.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone