Post by beenatural101 on May 27, 2010 19:20:12 GMT -6
Book number two ya'll!
Bees are kind enough to let you know ahead of time before they attack, like butting into you at a good clip over and over. This means GO! away, slowly but quickly if you can find a good balance you may not get stung. Now these warnings are usually reseved for passers-by mind you. Sometimes when you are "in the bees" they will warn you, but other times not they just kinda go for you. Alot of factors play into this, one is the breed of bees, seems that when they decoded the honeybee genome they uncovered some inrerestin facts about bee breeds, and bee breeding. It has long been known that often when you cross say a nice gentle caucasian bee with a nice gentle italian bee, you could end up with lets say the bees from hell. Recall a story mom told me about her dad helpin his dad with the bees. Had decent bees she said. Well they got to the hive on the end and evidently they had superseded the queen( or the old one swarmed away) and she got pretty mean with her breedin maybe she liked it rough who knows. Couple hundred stings later grandpa was allergic for the rest of his life. I'll come back to that someday in another thread. Well the original bee brought here(americas) by the settlers was the black bee, the NW europe native honeybee. Then they brought in these italians and when they crossed they got some really mean bees. The genome decoding has given us some hints here. All western honeybee strains came out of africa, and were probably first domesticated by the egyptians. They came into europe in 2 migrations, probably in the hands of man. They proved this by studying three markers present in the african honeybee. The black bee and the caucasian are thought to have came first, they have none of the markers. The Carniolans have 1 or 2 depending on the strain, and Italians have all 3. I am not a great student of history, but I remember some stuff. Egypt and the flight of the Jews, and quite a few years later the Roman empire, hmmmm. They found ancient beehives and lots of em in Israel. Ya know them greeks and Roman peoples took to the sea alot and did a lot o tradin. The Nile flows where hmm... OK after more than just a hint of speculation we have solved a mystery LOL! Cross-breedin different kinds a bees undoes all the generations of culling already done selecting for traits (gentleness primarily I would imagine, as well as adaptation to different climates) over a thousand years or 3. So mix em back and see if them genes combine ( honeybee has the highest sexual recombination level of any known species, don't forget) and revert back to AFRICAN BEES!!!!!! OOPS! here we go again!
On a far more personal level we are all human and tend to make mistakes. I don't care how well you think you got it together you will drop a frame of bees. Or its just a bad day. Worse it starts pourin out of a blue sky on ya when you are taking honey. Boy I love the 3 min old radar animated map. Beekeepers best pal. Maybe you aren't using smoke cause you don't want smoky honey and you just squish a bee( always have the smoker goin, especially if you are brave and don't suit up). Or your hive decides that they are NOT fairies and come to get you, just cause you kicked over the frame leaning up against the hive, or didn't strap a hive together good enough when you moved it. All mistakes I have learned from. Or you drop a hive, thankfully I haven't done that yet. Can't wait to see how pissed they get over a cut out and a stack of frames and big rubber bands OH MY!!!
OOPS!!!
And the worst horror story that doesn't involve your bees dying is this. You get this call for a swarm, and go to collect it but the landowner does not know how long it has been there. Always beware the old swarm! They may have been forced out of necessity to begin building comb without the cavity for it to go in. Any honeybee is going to be hyper defensive under such stress.
Bees are kind enough to let you know ahead of time before they attack, like butting into you at a good clip over and over. This means GO! away, slowly but quickly if you can find a good balance you may not get stung. Now these warnings are usually reseved for passers-by mind you. Sometimes when you are "in the bees" they will warn you, but other times not they just kinda go for you. Alot of factors play into this, one is the breed of bees, seems that when they decoded the honeybee genome they uncovered some inrerestin facts about bee breeds, and bee breeding. It has long been known that often when you cross say a nice gentle caucasian bee with a nice gentle italian bee, you could end up with lets say the bees from hell. Recall a story mom told me about her dad helpin his dad with the bees. Had decent bees she said. Well they got to the hive on the end and evidently they had superseded the queen( or the old one swarmed away) and she got pretty mean with her breedin maybe she liked it rough who knows. Couple hundred stings later grandpa was allergic for the rest of his life. I'll come back to that someday in another thread. Well the original bee brought here(americas) by the settlers was the black bee, the NW europe native honeybee. Then they brought in these italians and when they crossed they got some really mean bees. The genome decoding has given us some hints here. All western honeybee strains came out of africa, and were probably first domesticated by the egyptians. They came into europe in 2 migrations, probably in the hands of man. They proved this by studying three markers present in the african honeybee. The black bee and the caucasian are thought to have came first, they have none of the markers. The Carniolans have 1 or 2 depending on the strain, and Italians have all 3. I am not a great student of history, but I remember some stuff. Egypt and the flight of the Jews, and quite a few years later the Roman empire, hmmmm. They found ancient beehives and lots of em in Israel. Ya know them greeks and Roman peoples took to the sea alot and did a lot o tradin. The Nile flows where hmm... OK after more than just a hint of speculation we have solved a mystery LOL! Cross-breedin different kinds a bees undoes all the generations of culling already done selecting for traits (gentleness primarily I would imagine, as well as adaptation to different climates) over a thousand years or 3. So mix em back and see if them genes combine ( honeybee has the highest sexual recombination level of any known species, don't forget) and revert back to AFRICAN BEES!!!!!! OOPS! here we go again!
On a far more personal level we are all human and tend to make mistakes. I don't care how well you think you got it together you will drop a frame of bees. Or its just a bad day. Worse it starts pourin out of a blue sky on ya when you are taking honey. Boy I love the 3 min old radar animated map. Beekeepers best pal. Maybe you aren't using smoke cause you don't want smoky honey and you just squish a bee( always have the smoker goin, especially if you are brave and don't suit up). Or your hive decides that they are NOT fairies and come to get you, just cause you kicked over the frame leaning up against the hive, or didn't strap a hive together good enough when you moved it. All mistakes I have learned from. Or you drop a hive, thankfully I haven't done that yet. Can't wait to see how pissed they get over a cut out and a stack of frames and big rubber bands OH MY!!!
OOPS!!!
And the worst horror story that doesn't involve your bees dying is this. You get this call for a swarm, and go to collect it but the landowner does not know how long it has been there. Always beware the old swarm! They may have been forced out of necessity to begin building comb without the cavity for it to go in. Any honeybee is going to be hyper defensive under such stress.