[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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-- 
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