[ocba] Feral Honey Bees

Lewis Cauble lewis at hivebody.com
Wed Mar 14 08:43:04 EDT 2012


NCSU has a project going to look for feral colonies in Duke Forest.  They have
set up 80 swarm traps in 3 different sections of the forest. The NCSU crew was
out checking the traps in Duke Forest yesterday.  They found this colony still
thriving.  This will be it's 3rd season in the swarm trap.  This indicates to me
that chemical free beekeeping can be care free IF you have the right bees.
 
I would also note that there are no free lunches in nature.  I looked at this
colony about this time last year.  I mean I just stood there and looked at it. 
They hopped on me pretty quick.  I wouldn't judge the attitude of a colony on
just one interaction but the point is if you breed for one trait (super mite
resistance), you might lose something good somewhere else (gentleness).  The
trick is putting everything together in one package (resistant, gentle,
productive, frugal, et al).
 
Debbie Delaney has looked at the differences in the feral population and the
commercial population and I believe is working towards trying to inject some
feral genes in to our managed colonies.  I have not read the paper yet but you
may find it
interesting. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Summer2008/d_delaney_070108.pdf
 
 
Lewis
 

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On March 14, 2012 at 7:53 AM Kitty Cunningham <klparmley at gmail.com> wrote:


> 
> 
> 
> Chuck found an interesting site last night.  [http://www.savethehives.com/]
> http://www.savethehives.com/ [http://www.savethehives.com/]    It is connected
> to NCSU and works better with IE than Chrome.  I didn’t any any other
> browsers.
>  
> It’s a map of feral honey bee colonies all over the country. Some of the
> colonies people have included are NOT honey bees, but most are and it is an
> interesting project.  I emailed the person to contact to see if it is still
> going on, since it looks like it’s been a couple of years since there were any
> new entries.
>  
> A friend of mine has a feral colony in a tree on some property his family has
> in South Boston, VA.  He says it has been there for at least 20 years.  I
> would love to put an enticing hive nearby to try to persuade them into a
> box.   We don’t want to cut down the tree and takeallthe bees because they are
> surely helping the farmers in the area.
>  
> I’m curious to see for myself if these feral bees are more varroa resistant,
> but that will be a project for another year.  I think getting started with the
> packages we have ordered from Jeff Lee is probably enough project for this
> year.
>  
> Has anyone here succeeded in luring feral bees into captivity?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://mebanelabyrinth.blogspot.com/

 
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