When I worked at Green Briar Nature Center on the Cape, part
of my job was to develop teaching kits that could go out to the schools to
augment the science curriculum. I had
developed one on Honey Bee’s a few years ago, and ever since then, I have
thought it might be nice to have a hive of my own one-day.
The bees, as I am sure many of you know, are in a heap of
trouble and it almost seems our civic duty to attempt to raise some ourselves
in an attempt to increase the population. No bee’s-no pollination and you can
kiss those lovely fruit salads goodbye.
There I was, all Pollyanna optimism about the joys of
beekeeping when the lecturer began his presentation. Now, I don’t know if he read the description
of this course, but it WAS intended to encourage us to become beekeepers
ourselves. But I must say, half way
through, I put down my pen and stopped taking notes.
I knew from beekeeping talks I had heard on the Cape that it
was heavy work, lifting those “supers” full of honey takes some muscle. I also knew of course that it was sticky
work, and that one had to be vigilant to keep it clean and free of marauding
mice. Again, those are Cape Cod
problems. But, here in Texas, you have
to wear a custom made suit, breathable so you don’t just keel over from the
heat and it must be completely sealed so that fire ants don’t crawl up your
legs. Plus, the simple, bee “mesh
helmet” just wouldn’t do, for the omnipresent, Africanized bees are super
determined and can get in under regular netting and sting you till your face is
indistinguishable! Great.
And that suit would cost you about $250, for it has to be
custom made, and well, I asked, is it the rare hive that is bothered by African
bees? No, EVERY hive, EVERY bee in this
part of Texas has probably been Africanized.
And that’s because they are determined little buggers. The AHB (African Honey bee) is far more
aggressive than the EHB (European Honey Bee) using their swarms to take over
EHB hives. In many cases, it only takes
a more aggressive drone (male bee) to follow his nose to the queens pheromone
and mate with her, rather than a EHB drone and voila, in 6 weeks you have a new
batch of workers that are all Africanized.
They call it having a “hot” hive, one that might turn on you when you go
to extract the honey. Well, sign me up,
isn’t this sounding like fun!
The cure for a “hot hive” is to somehow catch and kill your
old queen and put in a new one that has already been fertilized by what one
article called, the “Golden Retriever” of bees –the EHB and in 6 more weeks,
peace will reign again in your kingdom, until of course the AHB drone moves in
and you have to start all over again.
And while you are at it, be sure to treat for fire ants
around your hives for they can get in and sting and eat everybody. Wonderful.
Then he shared another safety tip; if you inadvertently disturb a AHB
hive, run for the hills, as fast as you can, and don’t try the trick of jumping
in water for they will simply wait until you come up for air and get you
then. He once hid out in an outhouse for
15 minutes and found the bee waiting for him when he got out. Clearly there are no shirkers among the
AHB.
For that matter, whereas with the EHB, it is only the bees
who are pulling guard duty that will come at you, with AHB they have ALL sworn
allegiance to the Queen and any threat is dealt with by the ENTIRE HIVE,
thousands and thousands of bees. That is
why the end is sometimes fatal. Yikes.
It’s a long story to go into how the AHB got here in the
first place. Another tale of what “seemed
like a good idea at the time” turns out to be a true disaster. In a nutshell, scientists in Brazil wanted to
breed a bee that could better tolerate their climate, so they imported African honeybees. As always, some escaped and found the area
greatly to their liking and with such an aggressive and hard working attitude (they
rise earlier and work later than their European counterparts-no comment on
that) they soon took over; bad news for the rain forest and its native bees.
And it became bad news for the Southwest too.
It seems the barrier than keeps them out is an area that gets 55” of
rain over the year. Interesting, so all
you lucky temperate places shouldn’t have to worry.
But after all that, it really is considered more of a civic
duty than ever for backyard beekeepers to jump in the fray here in TX, for with
only a few hives to care for it is possible to keep swapping out your
Queen. Something a commercial beekeeper
just couldn’t do with hundreds of hives.
I don’t know, they are going to have to really lay on the guilt for me
to sign up. The lecture had at least 40
people in attendance. Maybe there were a
few tough Texans in there who are up to the challenge. Let’s hope there were. In the meantime, bee safe out there!
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