A swarm of bees find a bee log
posted by David The Good @ 7:00 AM
8 Comments
Florida Survival Gardening
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
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8 Comments:
According to Florida's apiary inspector, you should treat all feral hives like they are africanized bees. I have had two run-ins with their swarms. Amazingly aggressive.
It's that sort of attitude from the state that is dooming bees. They're spraying genetically fit feral colonies in a time when bees are dying out. I've been in contact with Africanized colonies as well, though most of them aren't near the devils they're portrayed. North of Orlando, most of the bees are quite friendly. These are too - I walked through the middle of them with nary a bump.
Nice sized swarm there. What ya gonna do just leave em in there?
Yes, for this year. They'll help my food forest with pollination, not to mention my melons. Next year I'll be watching for splits, then capture the swarms that leave and put them in Langstroth boxes.
Happy for you, David! I understand from reading up on the Africanized bees that they are indeed more demonized than they really are. Just seems to me that when government "experts" get involved with nature tampering, it eventually backfires to everyone's detriment. If you keep this up in your yard, you will have the best food forest in Florida! May you have happy hives!!
Thank you very much. You're totally right on the "experts."
I want to agree with you about the demonization of bees. Unfortunately, my real world experience with 2 africanized hives throws he caution flag. I scooped a bunch of bees out of some cement blocks at night and put them in an empty super. (They don't fly at night so the aggressive behavior isn't apparent.) I checked on them a few weeks later and they were so aggressive I had to wait 2 hours for the sun to go down until I could get the bee suit off. I can't have anything that dangerous on my property that a horse,donkey, dog or grandson could possibly come into contact with.
Yes... I've run into them once too. The behavior is definitely different. On the upside, they make a lot of honey and need a lot less care. On the downside, STUNG TO DEATH!
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