In the years 1993 and 1994 8 Scutellata Queen Bees have been brought to Northern
Germany in order to observe their behaviour under temperated climate conditions
of central Europe.
 
The queen bees were introduced into European colonies in November of each year.
They had been well accepted by the European colonies. The first Scutellata
worker bees occured in March of the next year. The African bees rapidly built up
strong colonies. In May, during the rape seed nectar flow, the colonies prepared
for swarming, and indeed at least one swarm left the bee yard.
 
The bees were rather aggressive: they turned very nervous when someone was
standing in the near of the hives. I never was able to open a hive without a bee
veil. After the inspections bees were following me more than 50 meters up to my
house. They even tried to enter the house through doors and windows.
 
A European bee colony was attacked by the African bees. It lost all its honey
and finally died out through the fight with the Africans and lack of food.
 
In August the African colonies were fed up with 20 kg sugar each in order to
prepare them for winter. Everything looked well: the bees readily took the food
and put it into the cells. The bees were very active and gathered much pollen
from wild flowers and from maize.
 
The colonies however died out during the first strong frost in December. The
African bees seem to be unable to build winter clusters like Europeans do.
Therefor they cannot stand cold below -5 degrees Celsius outside. Unfortunately
I could
not find out, if they would be able to overwinter at higher temperature without
flying out for several months.
 
That means that African bees should not be able to exist in cold regions, but I
believe that they would survive in mediterranean climates, where they can fly
out all the year and where strong frosts do not occur, like Southern Italy,
Spain, Southern Greece, France and the hole African North coast.
 
Kai-M. Engfer, Tel. 04347-8861                         \|
Ostlandstr. 1, http://insel.heim.at/mainau/330017    -|||8<
D-24247 Mielkendorf                                    /|