During their expansion, the bees were known to have traveled almost two kilometres (around one mile) per day. By 2007, it was reported that the Africanized Bees had established themselves in the New Orleans area. In 2005, the bees had spread further through the border of Texas and into Southwest Arkansas. The Africanized Bee cannot survive extended periods of forage deprivation, preventing intrusion into areas with harsh winters or extremely dry late summers.Īs of 2002, Africanized Bees had spread from Brazil to south and central America. The Africanized Bee deploys in greater numbers for defence and pursues perceived threats over much longer distances from the hive. The Africanized Bee has a higher proportion of ‘guard’ bees within the hive. The Africanized Bee guards the hive aggressively, with a larger alarm zone around the hive.
The Africanized Bee lives more often in ground cavities than the European Bees. The Africanized Bee has greater defensiveness when in a resting swarm. The Africanized Bee is more likely to ‘abscond’ – the entire colony leaves the hive and relocates – in response to repeated intrusions by the beekeeper. The Africanized Bee is more likely to migrate as part of a seasonal response to lowered food supplies. The Africanized Bee tends to swarm more frequently. However, Africanized Bees are less desirable for domestic bee keeping because of their aggressive behaviour.Ĭompared to European Bees, the Africanized Bee has different and more aggressive behavioural traits: Unfortunately on accidental release, the African queens eventually mated with local drones, and their descendants have since spread throughout the Americas.Īfricanized Bees have become the preferred type of bee for bee keeping as their honey produce is higher than that of normal honey bees.
The hives from which the bees were released had special excluder grates which were in place to prevent the larger queen bees from getting out but to allow the drones free access to mate with the queen. Hives containing these particular bees were observed as being different and were noted to be particularly more defensive than other honey bees. Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa. The release happened near Rio Claro, São Paulo State in the south of Brazil from hives operated by biologist Warwick E. scutellata) accidentally released by a replacement bee keeper in 1957. The Africanized Bee in the western hemisphere descended from 26 Tanzanian queen bees (A.
Africanized Bees are also known as ‘ Killer Bees‘ and are hybrids of the African Honey Bee and various European Honey Bees. Here in Victoria, on average, a queen bee reaches the age of four years - why kill the queen and replace her with a new one every year? A few drops of honey less in the third year?Īmong our best performing colonies where those where the bees themselves superseeded the queen, usually in the fourth year.Īs a hobby beekeeper you should only replace a bee queen when there is a valid reason for this particular queen to be replaced.Africanized Bees are also known as Africanized Honey Bees as they are a honey producing bee. When you have a strong, healthy and productive colony of friendly bees, why replacing the queen? Because a year is up? How cruel.Īs a hobby beekeeper you can afford spending the time to know the condition of each of your hives, their health, performance and characteristics. When you are dealing with a big number of hives the focus shifts from the individual hive to truck loads of hives and mass production. Unfortunately, the message "requeen every year" gets around from the big operators to the small hobby beekeepers - the big ones must know what is right, isn't it? Please keep in mind that sometimes, what you hear from the big ones is "right for them" but not necessarily right for you or the bees. Commercial operators handling 2000 hives cannot possibly know the performance of each individual queen and cannot deal with them on a case by case basis the broad brush approach is a compromise to optimise the overall result. What does not get considered is the fact that bee queens are all different, some perform better than others or at a different age. Maintaining strong colonies and maximising the honey yield is the idea behind it. February, so that the new queen reaches peak performance during the next honey season. In most cases this is done late summer, i.e. Answer: As a hobby beekeeper - absolutely not!Ĭommon practice for commercial beekeepers is to re-queen their hives every year some do it every two years.