Earlier I posted two announcements about an Africanized bee attack
in Orange County that occurred this past weekend.


Keith Malone asked:

"Did the information include what means or how the colony was tested
[for AHB]?"


Zachary Huang then wondered:

"A record yield for an African bee colony?  That is pretty
impressive, 500 lbs from one colony."


Keith countered:

"Which is why I questioned the testing method of determining the lineage of
the colony."


Tim Vaughan joined in:

"In South Africa occasionally you'd find huge amounts of honey in feral
hives, as they store it up over a period of years. It would be easier in
that area of California where nectar is available all year. I just wonder
how many swarms and micro swarms that hive sent out. I wonder also if
there were several hives next to each other, or whether the number of bees
was exaggerated."


Aaron Morris passed on a question from Jerry Hayes:

"What tests confirmed the AHB status?"


    I hope everyone realizes that newspaper accounts give little or no
technical information about such events, so I can only surmise what
might have taken place -- with a copy to Eric Mussen, State
Apiculturist, who might have some input.

    When any severe stinging incident occurs in the state, bee samples
are normally provided to the County Agriculture Commissioner's
office, where they are then forward to the state testing laboratory.
I do not know what tests they run but am fairly confident such tests
include DNA analysis.

    Tim Vaughan's point about the possibility of multiple colonies in
the apartment building strikes me as being right on point.  The
newspaper account did not reveal any information about how the bee
colonies were extracted from the building, but I much earlier had
reported in the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL the fact that we estimated eight
feral colonies living in a two-story house here in Santa Barbara.
You can find that account at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/abjsep1999.htm

    As it turned out, 14 colonies actually existed in the walls of
that house and had survived the varroa mite invasion in our area.

    I hope the above account proves useful (though not necessarily satisfying).

    (As an aside, Tom Seeley just published an article in the July
issue of BEE CULTURE that covers the same subject that I had
published back in 1999.)

                                                        Adrian
--
Adrian M. Wenner                (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road                 [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA  93103        www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

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*    The most formidable weapon against errors of any kind
*    is reason.
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