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Subject:
From:
Andy Nachbaur <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 8 Apr 1997 02:50:00 GMT
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show this past weekend on the "Killer Bee".
 
JM>From: Jim Moore <[log in to unmask]>
  >Date:         Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:24:09 EDT
  >Subject:      Question regarding the "Killer Bee" show on cable.
 
JM>        Well it would seem to me that even if the worker had not removed
  >the queen excluders that the Africanized bee would have "escaped"
  >anyway. It may have already been out when the incident of blame occured.
  >I would expect that during routine hive maintenance many drones would
  >have taken flight, thus providing the Africanized genes to the general
  >population.
 
 
Jim, you are 100% right. As one who has reared drones and kept them in
for months with excluders I have seen them take off by the thousands
darkening the sky with a roar and determination one has to see to believe
when all I did was crack the lid a tad.
 
Interesting thing is they only returned by the hundreds as most found
other hives or died in the field.
 
There is no practicable way to rear bees and keep from having the drones
fly away that I have ever read or heard about. Sure you could use
double excluders but the first time you worked the brood all the old
drones would take off.
 
In trapping pollen the drones are prevented from flying by the pollen
trap screen. The first traps I made you had to remove the hive top to
collect the pollen, the drones would knock off my glasses as soon as
I cracked that hive top.
 
The drone passes more then genes around the beekeeping community, such
as hitch hiking parasites like the varroa mite that prefers drone brood.
 
                            ttul, the OLd Drone
 
 
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