[ocba] Feral Honey Bees
Kitty Cunningham
klparmley at gmail.com
Wed Mar 14 10:59:15 EDT 2012
Lewis,
I think that feral hive wesite was part of Dr. Delaney's dissertation
research. I look forward to reading it tonight.
Thanks for the warning about the bad attitude. Good to know..
On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 8:43 AM, Lewis Cauble <lewis at hivebody.com> wrote:
> **
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
> 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/ 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 take *all* the 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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--
http://mebanelabyrinth.blogspot.com
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