JD>From: John Day <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:30:41 PDT
>Subject: aggressive bees, part 2
JD>there's been a lot of discussion about agressive bees lately, but no one
>has even suggested that they might be africanized. how does one know if
>your colony has become africanized? and could that be the reason for the
>recent post's concerns?
Hello John,
Most beekeepers can NOT tell the difference between Afrikaner
bees and other honeybees without much experience and a good imagination,
some bee scientists are not blessed with such bias and have adapted
some testing mythology to honeybees they claim are sensitive to the
detection of African bees.
You can turn a sample of your bees over to your local friendly county
agriculture commissioner and have them tested. I would not do this
and identify them as my own, but maybe wild bees or some neighbor
beekeeper who is crowding my pasture as they may want to come out and
kill all your bees just to bee safe.
The cost for this test could be about $150.+- per sample if you go the
OJ route and have a DNA work up done on the bees. Other then that there
is a fast test that uses the same methods first developed during WW II
to tell the good people from the bad people who were then gassed in
Germany, some were tested after being gassed or not tested at all. For
people it used measurements of the skull, but for bees it uses different
measurements of the fore wing and wax plates as I understand it. IMHO it
is not reliable and when several thousand hives were repeatedly tested
in Kern County, the more each hive was tested the grater the odd's it
would turn up positive and some hives did turn up positive on the third
tests that were negative on the first two tests just weeks apart. It is
interesting that the source of the queens in some of these hives were
from northern "California's Best", (a way to not name the bee breeder
family who's Italian bees they were from.) Testing was stopped soon
afterwards and the Kern County quarantine was abandoned, not because
more so called "killer" bees were not being identified by the tests, but
because the test failed to be accurate enough to avoid civil liability
in the courts if all the hives were destroyed to end the quarantine
based on the test results. Also additional information was provided that
showed bees from one end of the state to the other had also failed the
tests, or better stated, measured up to the tests.
The facts are that the USDA in setting up areas to test have found that
no matter where they set up they soon found the so called "killer" bees,
and because of this and the high cost of DNA tests they are not doing
much testing and now work on the idea that once 4 hives have been found
to be positive the whole area is considered as being positive. And in
any case have set a date that the tests they are using will be not long
be used, again because of dubious doubts the tests could survive any
judicial challenge. California reached the 4 hive plato quite awhile ago
and is now considered infested or invaded with "killer" bees, to such
an extent that the Los Angeles Police Department is at this time giving
"killer" bee training to their police officers who will be getting the
frantic 911 calls from the worried public. The training basically is one
of making hasty retreat away from any bees using by what is called in
their business as "leg bail".
At the same time local agricultural authorities in the areas that
have the "killer" bees now say the "killer" bees found in California
must have came in on the train because they say they have found them
adjacent to rail road tracks, but they have not explained why they only
got off at the spots where the bees have been detected and did not
travel to the end of the line, or maybe they did?
The truth of this whole sad episode in our beekeeping history is that
bees with African genes have been in California for more then 80 years
because of legal direct importation from Africa under the hands on
supervision by a early day USDA bee scientist who selected the stock,
made increase, and shipped the bees to the US where he returned to test
them more, (no record of any of these stocks being destroyed or not
having produced swarms and drones can be found), in fact the African
bees were not found to be any more aggressive then the worst American
stock at the time, and the bees that were the most aggressive were from
the Greek Islands and were for many years increased by some of the best
bee breeders of the time in the Modesto Area and were famous for their
big beautiful queens. I first saw these bees as a child in the 40's when
I attended the state fair which had dozens of glass bee hives with all
the different standards of bees being reared at the time. Way before
the infamous university scientist at Davis made a few bucks in the movie
business. The Afro bees found in both feral and hive bees from northern
to southern California and were never reported as being aggressive or a
problem of any kind in the first and last surveys. In the areas of the
US that all bees have been know to be aggressive regardless of genetic
history, such as the thorn bush regions of the southwest, any beekeeper
who does not live in these areas would be easy to convince that he had
seen the devil in the bees the first time he opened a hive. I was on my
first experience and I am a self taught skeptic, and only after trucking
bees, queens, and hives from California that I had worked down without
a veil into these areas was I myself convinced that it was the area and
not the bees. But good gracious they can make the honey in these
areas when conditions are ripe for it and in areas that no bee man
would want to brake down traveling trough for fear of dieing of hunger
and thirst before someone would come by to help. Maybe once or twice in
a generation comes the bloom known in northern Mexican something like as
the "Yellow Eye" of God, an experience in honey production one never
forgets if he does not burn out forever on honey taking and extracting
honey up to Christmas.
The few beekeepers who know or will admit they have the TEX-MEX or
"killer" bees in their hives are not reporting any thing out of the
ordinary, though some say they are more aggressive at times, and not
at other times. These bees also do NOT show any of the super bee
qualities that we would all like to have, that is they do not have a
survival rate any higher then what we are now experiencing as normal.
Some do report that they are more prolific, produce more brood, honey,
and require more work to keep from swarming. They also are reported to
appear to fly faster as they "dart" in and out of the hive. And some
beekeepers do use more smoke and protection from stings. I suspect that
some of these reports are not based on more then suggestion from what
other's have reported.
In any case bees in California can have very high indicators that they
are Afro in background, and can have the genetic map of the pure thing.
Should you worry about it?, I would not, as if your bees do kill someone
because they have bad genes..you are the first one who will feel the
barbs of their attacks and if they do not kill you and only kill your
neighbors you will be in the position of wishing they had killed you
anyway and I would suspect not be keeping bees soon after the 2nd
family in your neighborhood is killed by your bees.
More then a few hives come to California each winter for the spring
almond bloom and some stay around some until July, thousands of these
hives have originated in areas of Texas and Arizona that are know to be
infested with the TEX-MEX bee and these hives are the 1st cross if not
some of them being pure-o TEX-MEX. There has been nothing to keep drones
from these hives drifting into our local hives and feral bee hives so
you can expect that California has the so called bad genes and any other
state that receives bees from California after the almond bloom and that
just about covers the map of beekeeping pasture in the US. It is just a
question of time before some one is killed by bees with bad genes in
California as a small percentage of the population of the US is killed
each year from honeybee stings, maybe 12 to 20+- per year. The only
difference between the past and the future will be the bad genes and not
the numbers of people killed. This is the fact according to the world
health people who keep the morbid stats on deaths from bee stings around
the world and have not reported any increase because of bad genes. It is
also a fact that it matters not the quality of the genes of the bee that
kills, when it does that dirty deed it is indeed a "killer" bee at least
to the dead victims.
ttul, the OLd Drone
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(w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk.
---
~ QMPro 1.53 ~ ik ben een imker in Holland
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