Hello,

It appears that in the past few years, about 10% of the feral swarms I 
collect are of an extremely aggressive nature.  

I often keep my feral swarms collected in my assessment yard that is next 
to the house, where I can keep a close season long inspection on them 
before moving them out to the yards.  

This year, while hiving a swarm at night from by swarm bucket into a hive 
at one end of a hive stand, a 5 day old swarm in a hive 4 places down was 
the one to erupt, while others being closer on the stand showed no 
response to the vibrations.  I could clearly smell the alarm pheromone 
from 4 hive places away.

It appears to be typical in these aggressive types for one to detect alarm 
pheromone odor from up to 5 feet from the colony! The behavior also 
involves, when disturbed, bees exiting and crawling all over the hive, 
flying and stinging. And lawn mowers really set off these alarm pheromone 
producing colonies.

Over the past several years, I’ve taken up the habit of requeening 
colonies solely on the basis of detecting any smell of alarm pheromone 
outside the colony.    I’m suspecting this aggressiveness is a result of 
crosses between domestic strains, as history records much aggressiveness 
in bees during the time we were replacing the German Black with the 
Italian and later, during the early 1900’s Cyprian bees turned aggressive, 
but I’m not sure of any cause to explain it.

The aggressive colonies are similar to what I am used to dealing with in a 
typical aggressive colony.  What is NOT typical is the very strong odor of 
alarm pheromone, and this is what I am seeking information about.  Is it 
typical of any strain of bee to detect alarm odor from such a distance? 

Joe

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