God's Hellish Creatures

As a former beekeeper who kept them for many years, I will say that the man is wrong. You can identify killer bees because they build comb in the open, without any protection. They'll also build in old tires or on the ground under old wood or metal piles. Colonies that do this won't survive the winters in the north. All bees swarm in the summer. Telling someone to kill a swarm is stupid. I kept swarm traps out in the summer to catch the swarms I missed in my hives. Keepers who take their bees to California and other warm climates for their pollination seasons have had their bees pick up some genetics from the killer bees they brought back to the Midwest, but once they return home, the killer-bee genetics are bred out quickly. Those of us who bred queens would also quickly eliminate the ones producing hostile bees. No reputable beekeeper would tell anyone to kill bees indiscriminately.
 
Plowman said:
As a former beekeeper who kept them for many years, I will say that the man is wrong. You can identify killer bees because they build comb in the open, without any protection. They'll also build in old tires or on the ground under old wood or metal piles. Colonies that do this won't survive the winters in the north. All bees swarm in the summer. Telling someone to kill a swarm is stupid. I kept swarm traps out in the summer to catch the swarms I missed in my hives. Keepers who take their bees to California and other warm climates for their pollination seasons have had their bees pick up some genetics from the killer bees they brought back to the Midwest, but once they return home, the killer-bee genetics are bred out quickly. Those of us who bred queens would also quickly eliminate the ones producing hostile bees. No reputable beekeeper would tell anyone to kill bees indiscriminately.
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He's talking about killing all feral hives in AZ, not all feral hives in the lower 48.
 
I see why you would think he was saying otherwise, but I've followed the killer bee guy on facebook, and have seen it in context. The thing, is, killer bees don't always build in the open. They can survive the winter, and when they invade, they quickly take over. They are a much more efficient pollen gatherer, leaving less resources for the 'domestic' hives.

So, if he was suggesting to simply assume every feral swarm in the 48 states was Africanized, and to exterminate it, it was about management of the killer swarms, which will surely get out of hand without it.

The honey bee is not indigenous to America. They were brought over by Europeans, and most honey bees are actually managed. So eliminating the feral swarms will do little to affect the population of managed hives.

So, disagree or not, the killer bees are here, and are now endemic.
 
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