Re: Bitter winter spells trouble for US bee population

[Guest guest]

Bad news for the food supply and also bad news because it is opening territory for the Africanized Bees to spread more easily.

In a message dated 3/29/2010 4:58:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Bitter winter spells trouble for US bee population

[Guest guest]

Funny how the press keeps forgetting about the killer bees.

Administrator

Bad news for the food supply and also bad news because it is opening territory

for the Africanized Bees to spread more easily.

[Guest guest]

Not many people are aware of them. They are spreading up from the Mexican border area very rapidly. If regular honey bees are reduced in number, well, nature abhors a vacuum and they will move in, meaning they will spread much more quickly. And yes, it has been shown that they can survive in winter conditions. Not only that but Africanized queens can invade and change regular bee hives. They manage this because the Africanized queens hatch several days faster than the regular queens, meaning those queens will then do and kill the regular queens before they are hatched. From then on, all the new bees will be Africanized.

In a message dated 3/30/2010 12:14:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

Funny how the press keeps forgetting about the killer bees.Administrator

[Guest guest]

Yes they are. People aren't going to wake up to this danger until those bees get into major cities and mass attacks on crowds start to happen. Even then I don't know that much will be done.

In a message dated 3/31/2010 12:17:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, no_reply writes:

These bees were vicious.Administrator

[Guest guest]

I've seen a show where there were tracking these bees in Texas. Exterminators

and bee keepers in full bee-keeper garb killed off a lot of these bees when they

found them, but not without a fight. The two most remarkable things in the

program were these:

1) Any netted piece of the bee keeper's uniform was where the bees swarmed to

and stung, and many of the exterminators were stung not just through the

netting, but through the uniform repeatedly. They also tried to crawl through

any seam they could find.

2) " Normal " bees only followed the exterminators a hundred yards or so from the

nest before they gave up and flew back to the hive. Africanized honeybees

followed the exterminators over a half a mile before they BEGAN to drop away and

fly back. Most stayed with them about a mile.

These bees were vicious.

Administrator

Not many people are aware of them. They are spreading up from the Mexican border

area very rapidly. If regular honey bees are reduced in number, well, nature

abhors a vacuum and they will move in, meaning they will spread much more

quickly. And yes, it has been shown that they can survive in winter conditions.

Not only that but Africanized queens can invade and change regular bee hives.

They manage this because the Africanized queens hatch several days faster than

the regular queens, meaning those queens will then do and kill the regular

queens before they are hatched. From then on, all the new bees will be

Africanized.