Colombia is closed for importation of package bees. It only allows chilean
queens since 2016 but nobody seems to import/export between those two
countries. There are lots of queen trafiquing tough, mainly
carniolan&caucasian but some italians too. So yes, it is possible to verify
that continuous you mention, however the general case are very aggressive
bees not really suited for a high density pollination setting where there
are many people around doing their agricultural jobs.

They already had a situation where ferals living in a palm killed two
horses that were tied to the palm for a rest.

The avocado project is located at a closed basin between 2000 and 3000 masl
very suited for isolation. At the moment hass avocado cultivation at
Colombia is in its infancy, most of the pollination is done by local
insects and those that pollinate with honey bees use 1 hive per hectare.
For comparison at Chile Hass avocado is pollinated with 6 to 15 hives/ha.
Studies done at Colombia (on the other side of the Central Andes) suggest 3
hives/ha.

In this 5000 hectares (12000 acres) they have 1200 hectares already planted
in the past four years. 4 year old plants are already producing 10 ton/ha.
Previous owner of this slopes were cattle growers, so hass plantation had
ocurred in small plot of up to 20 ha that was the old pasture and there are
no plans to intervene those ravine forests. On the contrary, the idea is to
reconstruct those forest that without cattle will prospere better.

A team of Colombian entomologist from Agrosavia is going to study plant
insect visitation and will take care of local insects. In theory (they have
to confirm after Directory) I will take care of the honeybees. I plan to do
a short and simple experiment. Bring 100 italian packages from San Andres
Island (treated there for varroa previous to loading) and set them on new
material at the farm on the lowest point meters away from a given Hass plot
P1 of 20 hectares, giving 5 hives/ha. Compare the production of P1 with P2
Hass plot 3 km upstream at similar altitude and exposition and with plants
of similar age. Agrosavia Entomologist will sample P1 and P2 insect
visitation during bloom periods. Hass Production of P1 and P2 will be
compared.

I also suggested soil samples to check pesticide bioaccumulation and
hopefully check if those active principles used in the avocado production
happens to appear in nectar/pollen of the herbs, weeds, undergrowth around
the hass trees. It is not a really nice cocktail that could be already
endangering local pollinators existence and will oblige a good coordination
within the farm to close the hives when need. Their I&D department will
have to find a cleaner and more benevolent technological package, will they
find alternatives?.

As the basin is like a Y we will tint the sirup of Cyan, Magenta and
Yellow, for P1, P2 and a P3 communal feeder to map bees range, hopefully
much like M&M tinted honey at France
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/121011-blue-honey-honeybees-animals-science
.

With the excuse of the experiment to define how many hives should they have
for their pollination needs I will train their beekeepers of the future and
with them define the best way to manage between 3600 and 12000 hives. As
there is no clarity yet about the bloom periods, they need bees for at
least 8 month and there are no roads or good access, ,most of the movements
at to be done on foot by the slope at most by Mules I was searching with
colombian colleagues about their experience with packages bees and all said
it doesn't work.

So I was wondering if was weather or genetics the cause of failure reported
by our colombian colleages. I probably blame genetics (abscondig behaviour
of AHB) and package quality (old bees).

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