God help us there's wildife in the city!

[Moltar]

All of AZ's honeybees are Africanized. But you only have to worry about them when you disturb their hive. They don't aggressively protect their food sources and you don't have to worry about bees (Africanized or otherwise) when they're swarming--they have no established hive, at that point, to be protective of.

ALL? Are you sure that's correct? Not that I'm an expert on bees but it seems that one would have no way of verifying that this is true. Also, how could the africanized bee's have intermingled with every single hive in the state? I mean, 20 or so years ago every single honeybee in AZ was NOT africanized, that's a fact. How can someone say that now they all are? How could he know?

 

[desertanimal]

That's quite true. It is a logical impossibility to prove that.

But I was really just being sloppy with my language. I've been told by park rangers that 98% of AZ's honeybees are africanized, which is close enough to "all" for worrying about how to treat a wild colony. But, I have no way of verifying that information, so I asked a bee researcher friend about it. This was the response.

"I know that the bees have been broadly surveyed across the United States--especially in the 80s and 90s when the panic was at its peak in the US, but I don't know how closely that's monitored now. Its really not accurate to say that all of the bees in AZ are africanized. Beekeepers will nearly always have european bees, but they don't always maintain their colonies and can end up having open-mated queens. Their colonies along with their nice european queens can and do swarm and become feral colonies.

The issue is really that the aggressive traits of africanized bees are dominant. It's safe to assume that most feral honey bee colonies will act africanized, even though they could be genetically mostly european. And any queen that is open mated (not inseminated like some commercial queens) in AZ is probably going to produce aggressive daughters.

I've also heard that the bee populations around Flagstaff tend to be nicer, since africanized bees don't make it through the winter there. So, in higher elevation areas, the advance and retreat of africanized bees is really closely tied to climate."

So what this says to me is: all the wild honeybees in warmer areas of AZ are behaviorally africanized (which is really all that's important) or will be in their next generation, so you should never mess with a wild hive of honeybees in AZ. If you choose to mess with a wild hive of honeybees in the cooler areas of AZ, you take your chances.

 

[LeilaNami]

Is their any possibility of just a behavioral adaptation of European honeybees in response to the Africanized bee's presence regardless if one is in a particular hive or not?

 

[ZergFront]

That's very cool. I've gotten dirty looks many times from interacting with bugs to the point I really just don't care. Many are from strangers, people I would never even see again, anyway. I see a Phidippus jumping spider on my bus, you betcha I'll put it in my purse.

My friend freaked out when a bee landed on me and all I did was take it's thorax from the sides with my thumb and index finger and put it on a leaf. She screamed at me, "You could have gotten stung!" I said I'm not allergic. Learned that trying to keep bees as pets when I was little.

 

[desertanimal]

Is their any possibility of just a behavioral adaptation of European honeybees in response to the Africanized bee's presence regardless if one is in a particular hive or not?

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Louise E. Rothstein]

God help us there's wildlife in the city!

Would gentle bees become aggressive because their neighbors already are...?

That would probably depend upon whether the "bad" bees are close enough to the "good" bees to expose them to the "alarm odor" that signals "Stingable danger" to colony defenders...it is most unlikely that a more distant colony would "influence" other bees in that way.

What does most "influence" bees is genetic inheritance...
genes affect bees' dispositions more than human beings'.

That doesn't mean that you "can't" learn how to handle "difficult" bees.

It is more difficult to do,but it is not impossible:
Some people can work with bees that most people can't work with.

However,even if you can do it it would remain unwise to keep "touchy" bees in close proximity with people who don't know enough about bees to avoid getting in trouble...if "bargain" bees are likely to present this problem you might need to don a highly protective "bee suit" in order to requeen-with an inseminated queen-so that she won't breed the same problem.

 

[KnightinGale]

Cool pictures! And I never did know "Biologist" was a dirty word...

Ok, so I seem to have a fairly large point of ignorance here. I have never heard of this Africanized bee thing. Is it something that mostly happened in the States or do I need to pay closer attention to the news? Of course, if climate is a barrier, then much of this country would be inhospitable. I live in one of the warmer spots and I've never heard anybody mention it, though we have many beekeepers in the valley.

 

[catfishrod69]

honey bees are becoming extinct...they should have had a bee keeper come in and take them or move them..

 

[dtknow]

Neat-love the title. It is sadly true.

I ran into a similar swarm like that in Long Beach coating a bush. I was able to approach within inches of the swarm and pet some of the bees without any fuss-as well as have bees land on me. Swarming bees are too busy looking for a new place to live to be bothered with you.

I'd assume Africanized honeybee swarms would be mellow as well-but nothing you'd want to take chances with! I suppose you'd be in trouble if you accidentally squashed a bee and triggered a defensive response.

Technicaly bees are not really wildlife-they have gone feral after being domesticated and brought here by man. Anyway-that is not to say its a good thing for farmers if they die out.

 

[The Collector]

Very nice photos.....
I've always wanted a bee hive, never got around to get one.
PS: You biologist! You make me want to :barf: lmao!

 

[desertanimal]

I'd assume Africanized honeybee swarms would be mellow as well-but nothing you'd want to take chances with! I suppose you'd be in trouble if you accidentally squashed a bee and triggered a defensive response.

They are. They're fine when swarming.

 

[LeilaNami]

Would gentle bees become aggressive because their neighbors already are...?

That would probably depend upon whether the "bad" bees are close enough to the "good" bees to expose them to the "alarm odor" that signals "Stingable danger" to colony defenders...it is most unlikely that a more distant colony would "influence" other bees in that way.

What does most "influence" bees is genetic inheritance...
genes affect bees' dispositions more than human beings'.

Thanks Louise!

Ok, so I seem to have a fairly large point of ignorance here. I have never heard of this Africanized bee thing. Is it something that mostly happened in the States or do I need to pay closer attention to the news? Of course, if climate is a barrier, then much of this country would be inhospitable. I live in one of the warmer spots and I've never heard anybody mention it, though we have many beekeepers in the valley.

They are pretty much as far north as the southwestern United States. Since you are in Canada, you will never likely have to worry about them until you start having 9 month summers

honey bees are becoming extinct...they should have had a bee keeper come in and take them or move them..

Not necessarily. They are unsure of what's happening in regard to CCD. There are numerous theories including a natural decline after a population boom in the 50's. There was a sharp decline however when an invasive mite was accidentally introduced in the 1980's.

 

[catfishrod69]

well they have drastically reduced here in ohio....used to be everywhere, now i only see a couple a year....

Not necessarily. They are unsure of what's happening in regard to CCD. There are numerous theories including a natural decline after a population boom in the 50's. There was a sharp decline however when an invasive mite was accidentally introduced in the 1980's.[/QUOTE]

 

[What]

well they have drastically reduced here in ohio....used to be everywhere, now i only see a couple a year....

Please stop falling for the hype.

Read this: Honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder, in Context

 

[catfishrod69]

im not falling for any hype...i dont care what all that link said...those people dont stand in my back yard and first hand see no honey bees....they used to be everywhere around here, also had a hole in the ground at the top of my yard they lived in....now i might see/catch 1 per season....we also had a business down the road that made honey, so they had hundreds of wooden hive boxes....well we had a horrible flood , and they lost em all....all the bees died too....the water was 8 feet deep where you could normally walk 5 feet above the creekline...

Please stop falling for the hype.

Read this: Honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder, in Context

 

[What]

im not falling for any hype...i dont care what all that link said...those people dont stand in my back yard and first hand see no honey bees....they used to be everywhere around here...

...we also had a business down the road that made honey, so they had hundreds of wooden hive boxes....well we had a horrible flood , and they lost em all....all the bees died too....the water was 8 feet deep where you could normally walk 5 feet above the creekline...

Dont you think that your local abundance and now lack of abundance of bees might have more to do with the fact that the bee keeping company near you no longer operates and lost their colonies to a natural disaster than what is referred to as "colony collapse disorder"?

 

[catfishrod69]

no i dont, because the bees were all over here before the business, and the business was only open couple months before the flood...the drastic decline actually started like 5 years before the business

Dont you think that your local abundance and now lack of abundance of bees might have more to do with the fact that the bee keeping company near you no longer operates and lost their colonies to a natural disaster than what is referred to as "colony collapse disorder"?

 

[What]

no i dont, because the bees were all over here before the business, and the business was only open couple months before the flood...the drastic decline actually started like 5 years before the business

You should report your spectacular drop in bee population to your county entomologist then. (And if the company was only open a couple months...why even mention them?)

 

[catfishrod69]

im sure they already know...all over ohio they are reducing bad...and i just mentioned the company because i know that they had millions of bees, that could have seperated and became wild, but all drowned...

You should report your spectacular drop in bee population to your county entomologist then. (And if the company was only open a couple months...why even mention them?)

 

[LeilaNami]

The reason people are so scared about CCD is because in the 1950's we had 5.5 million colonies of bees. We are now down to 2.5 million as of 2000.
Well here are some theories about CCD

1. the introduction of the varroa mite in the 1980s (though there was a sharp decline after the introduction, the population estimate was already on the decline)
2. new/emerging diseases (not sure which diseases they are thinking about)
3. pesticide poisoning (we really are using a god awful amount of pesticides now)
4. RNA virus (Cox-Foster et al. 2011) (however has this virus always existed or are we just now discovering it because we are looking at the bees more closely because of CCD?)
5. most highly suspected cause is potential immune-suppressing stress caused by a combo of factors including poor nutrition, drought, migratory stress, and habitat destruction
6. and finally it is a natural decline because we DID have a population boom in the 1950's.

Fact is, we know so little about what is going on and there is just not enough evidence to support any of these theories right now.