On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:43:04 -0600, allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Right.  Good point, and Brazil is making a lot of honey with AHB as I
>understand it.  I also seem to recall that AHB in Brazil is different from
>the AHB that reached the US, and, of course it has been there much longer so
>they have had more time to adjust.

These are not the key points that Ernesto Guzman makes in his
presentation. The key issues with African bees are related to
behavior, of course, but even if the temperament could be mollified
somehow, they are still not suitable for modern beekeeping.

One has to recall that regarding Brazil and the Americas in general,
the choice was either learn to use AHB or get out of the business.
Honey production has increased in Brazil but this is chiefly due to
the fact that there many more hives there now, as a consequence of the
AHB's constant swarming. Per colony production took a nose dive.

It is much more difficult to make a profit with AHB than European
bees. Due to their behavior all manipulations and procedures take more
time and effort. The constant swarming makes it easy to get new
colonies and repopulate dead outs, but detracts in all other areas.

Swarms and small colonies are manageable enough but established large
colonies are vicious and nearly impossible to requeen. Apiaries have
to be sited far from animals and people, rendering them of limited
usefulness in pollination.

Africanized honey bee colonies are abundant in the greater
Tucson metropolitan area, and requests for colony and swarm
removals increased from 14 in 1994 to 1613 in 2001.

Seasonal absconding also may contribute to the distribution
and abundance of swarms and colonies. Seasonal absconding is
the abandonment of a nest site due to low resource availability
and the relocation of the colony to another nest site in an area
with presumably higher resource availability

Seasonal absconding in the Tucson area is associated with low
resource availability in the mountains surrounding Tucson in
the fall and winter months and higher resource availability in
the Tucson basin where agriculture and horticultural practices
increase floral availability


SEE:
Africanized honey bees in urban environments:
A spatio-temporal analysis
by Kristen A. Baum, et al.
Landscape and Urban Planning
Volume 85, Issue 2, 10 April 2008, Pages 123-132

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