JD>From: John Day <[log in to unmask]> >Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:30:41 PDT >Subject: aggressive bees, part 2 JD>there's been a lot of discussion about agressive bees lately, but no one >has even suggested that they might be africanized. how does one know if >your colony has become africanized? and could that be the reason for the >recent post's concerns? Hello John, Most beekeepers can NOT tell the difference between Afrikaner bees and other honeybees without much experience and a good imagination, some bee scientists are not blessed with such bias and have adapted some testing mythology to honeybees they claim are sensitive to the detection of African bees. You can turn a sample of your bees over to your local friendly county agriculture commissioner and have them tested. I would not do this and identify them as my own, but maybe wild bees or some neighbor beekeeper who is crowding my pasture as they may want to come out and kill all your bees just to bee safe. The cost for this test could be about $150.+- per sample if you go the OJ route and have a DNA work up done on the bees. Other then that there is a fast test that uses the same methods first developed during WW II to tell the good people from the bad people who were then gassed in Germany, some were tested after being gassed or not tested at all. For people it used measurements of the skull, but for bees it uses different measurements of the fore wing and wax plates as I understand it. IMHO it is not reliable and when several thousand hives were repeatedly tested in Kern County, the more each hive was tested the grater the odd's it would turn up positive and some hives did turn up positive on the third tests that were negative on the first two tests just weeks apart. It is interesting that the source of the queens in some of these hives were from northern "California's Best", (a way to not name the bee breeder family who's Italian bees they were from.) Testing was stopped soon afterwards and the Kern County quarantine was abandoned, not because more so called "killer" bees were not being identified by the tests, but because the test failed to be accurate enough to avoid civil liability in the courts if all the hives were destroyed to end the quarantine based on the test results. Also additional information was provided that showed bees from one end of the state to the other had also failed the tests, or better stated, measured up to the tests. The facts are that the USDA in setting up areas to test have found that no matter where they set up they soon found the so called "killer" bees, and because of this and the high cost of DNA tests they are not doing much testing and now work on the idea that once 4 hives have been found to be positive the whole area is considered as being positive. And in any case have set a date that the tests they are using will be not long be used, again because of dubious doubts the tests could survive any judicial challenge. California reached the 4 hive plato quite awhile ago and is now considered infested or invaded with "killer" bees, to such an extent that the Los Angeles Police Department is at this time giving "killer" bee training to their police officers who will be getting the frantic 911 calls from the worried public. The training basically is one of making hasty retreat away from any bees using by what is called in their business as "leg bail". At the same time local agricultural authorities in the areas that have the "killer" bees now say the "killer" bees found in California must have came in on the train because they say they have found them adjacent to rail road tracks, but they have not explained why they only got off at the spots where the bees have been detected and did not travel to the end of the line, or maybe they did? The truth of this whole sad episode in our beekeeping history is that bees with African genes have been in California for more then 80 years because of legal direct importation from Africa under the hands on supervision by a early day USDA bee scientist who selected the stock, made increase, and shipped the bees to the US where he returned to test them more, (no record of any of these stocks being destroyed or not having produced swarms and drones can be found), in fact the African bees were not found to be any more aggressive then the worst American stock at the time, and the bees that were the most aggressive were from the Greek Islands and were for many years increased by some of the best bee breeders of the time in the Modesto Area and were famous for their big beautiful queens. I first saw these bees as a child in the 40's when I attended the state fair which had dozens of glass bee hives with all the different standards of bees being reared at the time. Way before the infamous university scientist at Davis made a few bucks in the movie business. The Afro bees found in both feral and hive bees from northern to southern California and were never reported as being aggressive or a problem of any kind in the first and last surveys. In the areas of the US that all bees have been know to be aggressive regardless of genetic history, such as the thorn bush regions of the southwest, any beekeeper who does not live in these areas would be easy to convince that he had seen the devil in the bees the first time he opened a hive. I was on my first experience and I am a self taught skeptic, and only after trucking bees, queens, and hives from California that I had worked down without a veil into these areas was I myself convinced that it was the area and not the bees. But good gracious they can make the honey in these areas when conditions are ripe for it and in areas that no bee man would want to brake down traveling trough for fear of dieing of hunger and thirst before someone would come by to help. Maybe once or twice in a generation comes the bloom known in northern Mexican something like as the "Yellow Eye" of God, an experience in honey production one never forgets if he does not burn out forever on honey taking and extracting honey up to Christmas. The few beekeepers who know or will admit they have the TEX-MEX or "killer" bees in their hives are not reporting any thing out of the ordinary, though some say they are more aggressive at times, and not at other times. These bees also do NOT show any of the super bee qualities that we would all like to have, that is they do not have a survival rate any higher then what we are now experiencing as normal. Some do report that they are more prolific, produce more brood, honey, and require more work to keep from swarming. They also are reported to appear to fly faster as they "dart" in and out of the hive. And some beekeepers do use more smoke and protection from stings. I suspect that some of these reports are not based on more then suggestion from what other's have reported. In any case bees in California can have very high indicators that they are Afro in background, and can have the genetic map of the pure thing. Should you worry about it?, I would not, as if your bees do kill someone because they have bad genes..you are the first one who will feel the barbs of their attacks and if they do not kill you and only kill your neighbors you will be in the position of wishing they had killed you anyway and I would suspect not be keeping bees soon after the 2nd family in your neighborhood is killed by your bees. More then a few hives come to California each winter for the spring almond bloom and some stay around some until July, thousands of these hives have originated in areas of Texas and Arizona that are know to be infested with the TEX-MEX bee and these hives are the 1st cross if not some of them being pure-o TEX-MEX. There has been nothing to keep drones from these hives drifting into our local hives and feral bee hives so you can expect that California has the so called bad genes and any other state that receives bees from California after the almond bloom and that just about covers the map of beekeeping pasture in the US. It is just a question of time before some one is killed by bees with bad genes in California as a small percentage of the population of the US is killed each year from honeybee stings, maybe 12 to 20+- per year. The only difference between the past and the future will be the bad genes and not the numbers of people killed. This is the fact according to the world health people who keep the morbid stats on deaths from bee stings around the world and have not reported any increase because of bad genes. It is also a fact that it matters not the quality of the genes of the bee that kills, when it does that dirty deed it is indeed a "killer" bee at least to the dead victims. ttul, the OLd Drone (c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk. --- ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ ik ben een imker in Holland