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Tomball,Texas | Once a hive is Africanized,there is no mistaking it,when you take the lid off of a calm bee hive a few bees will fly around you and try sting you,walk about 15 or 20 feet away and they’ll leave you alone,an aggressive hive about 50 or 100 will buzz you and follow you 100 or 200 feet.When you mess with an Africanized colony hundreds of bees will try to sting you,a thousand sounds like an exaggeration but basically any bees in the colony that are old enough fly come after you and they will follow you at least 200 or 300 yards.
In my limited experience the lighter colored bees are calmer,the Africanized bees are a lot darker.
Queen raising is pretty neat,I’ve never done it but I’m good friends with a man that does,I can’t quote the exact procedure for producing the queen but there are two ways to introduce a new queen to a hive.
When you raise a queen you put an egg in a plastic “cell” for it to grow in,a couple days before it’s ready to hatch you put it in your hive between a couple frames,you try to find the existing queen and kill her,your hive is then queenless for a short while and will usually accept the new queen when she hatched,when she’s a few days old she will leave on a mating flight and start laying soon after that.
If you can’t find the existing queen to kill it you can just put the cell in the hive and when it hatches the two queens will fight and the young one typically kills the old one,if the colony doesn’t accept the new one they will kill her and raise their own new queen with an egg the existing queen laid setting your hive back about a month and not changing your genetics.
A queen raiser can also produce mated queens and you put a live mated queen in a hive,she’s put in a little “cage” with hard candy type plug that takes a while for the bees to eat the plug out.You need to kill the existing queen so the bees will accept the new one,when she gets out she can go right to laying eggs and as they hatch out and the old ones die off your genetics change,that’s the fastest way to change the demeanor of a hive.
I relate a single bee hive to a single cow,some are healthier than others,produce more than others,they get sick,need to control parasites to keep them healthy,and some of them just die out for no apparent reason.
Edited by FJS 5/10/2018 16:57
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We’re being infested with BEE’S and need help eradicating!!
