Hi Martin and All Martin wrote: > Could you please let me know if you are certain who in Europe is > keeping Cape bees? This bees shouldn't be kept for research purposes > outside of their native environment at all!!! If they spread outside > South Africa I guess their effect on commercial beekeeping as we > know it would be devastating. If you can confirm this we must move I believe the hives have been killed a few years back. I think the figures were 6 hives in one of the bigger continental research facilities. I believe they may have been kept in flight rooms, but we know how bees are. > real fast to convince the people that keeps them to KILL THEM AT > ONCE. We already have many problems with Varroa and Africanized bees I think there is a commo link here. The varroa problem occurred because people moved bees to asia and from asia to europe without apppreciating thhe results. Now as a result two species of bees have been nudged to the brink of extinction. (Apis cerana is in manny cases out competed by A.m and V.jacobsonii from A.cerana kills A.m so both species zap each other. Likewise before the truue magitude of the cape bee problem was realised a few colonies may have been kept in central europe and in the interests of the bee species it is probably worthwile for people to look for signs of the cape bee, as it will muultiply slowly in the popuulationn as a sort of parasite. I remember a while back that some people mentioned they had colonies that were hopelessly queenless annd came back and the colonies were roaring ahead. This is a phenomenon I have seen hapen twelve times this year with my bees alone. A handful of cape bees will lay a few eggs for about three weeks and then raise a new queen who is extremely vigorous and somehow they manage to raise a whole stack of brood without foraging too much. My only reason for mentioning this is that I am a strong conservationist and believe that it is of importance for people to beware of the dangers of moving species into new environnments where they could not naturally have migrated. (EG the South African barbel Clarius garipinus that was introduced into the amazon river and will wipe out more than 200 species of fish in the next 10 years) Keep well Garth --- Garth Cambray Kamdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Apis melifera capensis Grahamstown 800mm annual precipitation 6139 Eastern Cape South Africa Phone 27-0461-311663 3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology Rhodes University Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way reflect those of Rhodes University.