Hi Angus!
Thank you for writting me.  I don't exactly know for shure what Kind of bees
these are, I just know they are not like any of the honey bees I've seen
anywhere else.  Last May I bought a nuke of buckfast.  Two days after I put
the buckfast into their new hive, I had three wild swarms land in the little
tree beside the house.  I was so excited that I went and got grandpa's old
hives out from under the barn and started to shake the bees into a plastic
pail and dump them into the hive.  I didn't know what I was doing, because I
dumped all three swarms into the same hive.  They started to fight and kill
each other.  When they were finished I had  two dead queens and three fists
fulls of bees that hated each other.  I read a lot and by July had raised
one new queen by taking the old queen away and forcing them to raise a new
one and I did the news paper thing and combined the to queenless swarms with
the old queen.  By the middle of August they were three hive bodies high.  I
took the old queen away again, they raised 17 queen cells and on the 10th
day I separated the three hive bodies and devided up the queen cells as
equally between them as I could.  Then by October they were laying and I
ended up putting them in the basement for the winter.  My buckfast have
always been very..... hot.  I got  attacked whenever I go near them.  Four
days ago I killed their queen and trapped and killed the drones because I
don't want them to cross breed with my little wild brown ones.  I am in 7
days going to split the buckfast workers up into 20 nukes and give them each
a brown queen.
 
I will somehow get those pictures to you.  They don't show the bees close
up, mostly it's my great grandfather and another of my granfather with a
swarm and in the bee yard.
 
I would gladly share in conversations with you.  I hope that the bees I have
have some resistance to the mites.  I was told that the varola has been here
for 9 to 10 years.  The buckfast drone brood had them, I checked the brown
ones and didn't find any when I opened them up.  I treated the bees last
fall with those apistain strips, and they are at the moment having a
treatment of formic acid pads.  The brown bees have never offered to sting
me.  I've only been stung once by them.  The last time I worked the buckfast
they got in my suit and stung me 11 times. They were always hot heads.
 
regards
 
Debbie Hutchings
507 Hutchings Road                             fax/phone  1(613)273-3265
Westport, Ontario                              home phone 1(613)273-5325
KOG 1XO
Canada
 
P.S.  These bees have a black thorax, with dark brown/tan body hair, then
the first band on their abdoman is a bit wider than the rest of the bands,
it is brown/tan in colour, the next is a black narrower band, then a narrow
brown/tan, then a narrow black, then narrow brown/tan, and then the tip of
their abdoman looks like someone dipped them in black paint. They look to be
smaller than buckfast, and they are all coloured the same, whereas I noticed
that the buckfast verried in uneven markings to different shades of colours.
    The drones of the brown bees are black with chocolate brown hair.  The
buckfast drones are lighter with a golden body hair.