Hi Ted/All

Ted Wrote:

> Garth writes about the gentleness which has become part of the
> capensis bee's characteristics, often wondered about the Cape bee,
> and have these questions:
>
> 1) Laying workers can produce normal queens, and I suppose other
> workers as well.  Have these workers therefore mated with drones, or
> are the fertile eggs haploid?  If haploid, what determines if an egg
> develops into a queen/worker or a drone?

No - the eggs are diploid clones of the mother worker who laid them.
It is possible for a capensis colony to exist for a few months
without a queen. It is also very common for the capensis workers to
drift (some say up to 10% of bees). This means you have a constant
swarm swop going on in an apiary - ie you do not have single hives in
the apiary but rather a collective always swopping. There are
therefore two types of bees in the apiary - those who had a queen as
a mother - new genetic combinations, and those who had a worker as a
mother (large clone lines). No big surveys have been done, but I
believe some of these clone lines may represent the largest 'insects'
on the planet with imortalised strains stretching from cape town to
pretoria and further!!

Recent research suggest that up to 10% of eggs layed in a capensis
hive are worker derived as well. We have yet to determine whose eggs
become the new queens, but I would bet on worker there too.

> 2) All I have read about this bee suggests that it is a scourge upon
> the beekeeping world, and steps must be taken to prevent its spread
> elsewhere.  What is so bad about it - does it swarm excessively,
> produce little honey, too much propolis, get diseases or parasites
> more readily than others - or what?  (Maybe the queen breeders just
> don't want to have self-requeening colonies around.)

Well, I average about 60kg a year in semi desert, and with good
maintenance can get over a 100kg in better forage. They swarm once in
spring and once in autumn if rains are good. Splits prevent swarming,
as does killing the queen. They are hard to requeen with fresh
queens and are best left to requeen naturally - takes about 18days.
They are resistant to most diseases, and due to their great genetic
diversity have more natural resistance to most things than most other
races ever will (think - a successful clone can transfer that line
into new queens forever if it is a good line).

They are moderate propolisers. They are gentle.

They have strong reponses to predators - including moths (wax moth is
seldom a problem), birds (if they have heat they will kill any bird
that comes within 4m of a hive for long), frogs (in spring a frog
that comes to the entrance ceases to live fast), humans (if you
happen to have a dark skin or african hair the cape honey bee will
victimise you).

BUT - if you have them you cannot keep other bees. They will replace
the bees in any other race of bee's hive with a capensis queen. And
if one is a conservative SA beekeeper accustomed to A.m.scutellata,
and the infinite joys of having to wear two overalls, two sets of
gloves, masking tape and so on to work hives after the aloe honey
flow this is terrible - who would want to be able to work the bees
without a suit.

I personally believe the cape honey bee is the bee of the future -
the only bee able to out do the african honey bee, the natural host
of the small hive beetle and thus resistant to it, this bee will with
a bit of fine tuning and careful analysis be worth it's weight in
cold.

Keep well

Garth
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
6139 South Africa

Time = Honey