Bees with an attitude

[navegator]

Africanized honey bees are very aggressive in defending the hive, to them it does not matter if the threat is two legged or four legged.

When the bees establish a hive, they also establish boundaries of defense, and knowing the subtle warnings can save you from a nasty sting or several more.

When entering the defensive perimeter, the bees will begin to "harass" you by flying directly to your face and veering off at the last minute, bees have very good eye site and recognize the face or head of the threat, one or two bees you are in the outer perimeter, the closer you get to the hive the more bees will come warning you until they sound the alarm and you're done, you need to run at least a mile or more before they they stop chasing you, that is if you can out run then.

And jumping into a pool will not save you they can see you under the water if it is a clear swimming pool and every time you come up for air they will enter your mouth and nose, one person in Arizona perished with more than a thousand stings in his mouth, throat and trachea.

If you are walking along and the bees start coming at you, you are now close to a bee hive, it can be anywhere on a tree, on a building and even underground, another thing that annoys them is noise specially low rumbling or thumping repetitive, lawnmowers and Diesel engines as example.

When the bees start coming at you best thing is to turn around and leave the area, also alert the proper authorities so that they can move the hive to a safe place, killing them is not productive since we need them for agriculture.

If there is a bee in your immediate vicinity do not swat at it, gently move away or very slowly move your had towards it as long as it is not coming at your face and veering off, it will get the message that it is not welcome there.

So BEE alert for bees coming at you.

navegator

[EdwardHeavy]

It is quite dangerous to be hit by such bees. If you have an allergy, you can even die

[silversand]

...link--> This will work; much shorter link to the Youtube assassination hornet report.

IMO, I think it is extremely rare historically that any invasive insect had (ever?) been eradicated from North America. With 200 queens being produced from that particular reported single nest, and 70-odd escaping....good luck. I think that these hornets are here to stay.

[Tom_Barb]

Pangaea Ron wrote:
Sorry, bad link

Copy then paste the link.

[Pangaea_Ron]

Sorry, bad link

[Tom_Barb]

Pangaea Ron wrote:
Tom/Barb

I can't seem to get the link to work?

Is your power back on after the wild weather day yesterday? We lost our power for 6 hours and we're glad for our new natural gas generator. I used to back-power the home refrigerators/freezers from the motorhome generator, but this is much better.

Ron

we are back to normal today, but stand by for another storm tonight..

we don't worry, we have a motorhome, just move in and turn the heat up.

we lost power around 1130 AM to about 1 AM, just leave the freezers closed.

[Talleyho69]

The link works for me.

[Pangaea_Ron]

Tom/Barb

I can't seem to get the link to work?

Is your power back on after the wild weather day yesterday? We lost our power for 6 hours and we're glad for our new natural gas generator. I used to back-power the home refrigerators/freezers from the motorhome generator, but this is much better.

Ron

[Tom_Barb]

try this
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjH5p6P6YPtAhU6JTQIHbu4BJkQtwIwAHoECAYQAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVe2zGTR_KxA&usg=AOvVaw3fAW9q9MsoGTTxyEsLVDmP

[navegator]

The European honey bees have very good eye sight and do recognize the bee keepers, when I was at the boarding school in Sweden the grounds keeper had six bee hives, and I was very interested in them so he loaned me the hat and mesh, I was worried about the hands and arms and he told me not to worry they would not sting, they did not sting me.

After a little more than three months the bees recognized me and I was able to lift the mesh and eventually take the hat off, as I approached the hives they would start bussing around me and some would land on my face and then take off, never got stung.

When the time came to transfer a new queen to a new beehive, I would help with the making of the new wooden box and the frames, then we would take the new hive to the area where the new colony would be established and the new queen bee was placed in a small wooden cage, I would tie the little box to my neck on the back and walk or bicycle the swarm to the new location, the area where the school is located has apple and pear groves, the smallest production area produces 20 to 25 crates of apples or pears, in private gardens in town.

The African bees were imported to Brazil, for a study since they produce more honey per hive than the European bees, in Brazil the hives were equipped with a "comb" it is basically a structure that permits the workers to go past but not the queens, since they are larger and do not fit through.

Along comes one of the bee keepers and removes the combs, lack of communication from the bosses and plain ignorance are wonderful, so the bees are now out, and slowly they migrated to the rest of the continent.

And now we have the hornets from Asia, those suckers are nasty and they kill the good bees that we need for agriculture, so those of you that live in Western Canada and North Western USA keep an eye out, just remember the bees are small yellow about the size of the last bone in your pinky and the hornets are orange and as big as your thumb and have really big eyes.

You all bee good now ya hear

navegator

[silversand]

....the purest Africanized bee (meeting all the genetic criteria) are slightly smaller than our European variety (unmixed with Africanized DNA), I read. The Africanized variety can fly at appx. 15 ~ 20 miles per hour, apparently, under ideal conditions.

[Wm_Elliot]

The Africanized bees I have seen do not have a hive in the traditional sense but the bees all pile on top of each other. There's no structure other than a mass of bees. I have outrun a swarm by luck - the swarm veered off at the last minute and went in a different direction.

[silversand]

navigator wrote:
When the bees establish a hive, they also establish boundaries of defense, and knowing the subtle warnings can save you from a nasty sting or several more.

VERY interesting writeup. Thanks. We've always had in the back of our minds the 'what if" we ever encountered Africanized bees when exploring in the Southwest US.

To the best of my knowledge, only honeybees that carry isozymes, mitochondrial DNA, and morphometric traits (all three) can be classified as Africanized. And the approximate most northerly range of bees carrying all three traits is the Humboldt National Forest area in Nevada; the Yosemite National Park region CA; the Pecos Wilderness area of NM; the Tonkawa area of Oklahoma; and in Florida, west coast Spring Hill to east coast Merritt Island National Seashore latitudes (occasionally, central Georgia, but rarely) . These northerly range extremes shouldn't be gospel, but rough northern ranges of the purest genetic Africanized strain....

If we go into remote areas south of central Florida (and, when we explored any distance more than maybe appx 1000 feet from our truck camper in the Southwest), we always had on bug suit jackets. This is one of my special bug suits when I was collecting ticks potentially infected with Lyme disease carrying parasites, last August in Long island, in 97F temperatures, 80% humidity. I normally wear a "boonie" hat under the head-gear that tents the material well away from my face and neck. This face net actually unzips for ventilation:

[Pangaea_Ron]

The single hornet nest was found about 40 miles north of us. So far so good? But there are probably more nests?

I hope that BC, Canada is being as vigilant as we are in WA State. They hornets probably came from Asia through Vancouver and then to the US.

[Talleyho69]

Times they are a changing!