At The Boojum Beeyard: May

The Boojum Beeyard is really buzzing now! The flowers are all blooming and the bees are booming. We just put honey supers on two of our four established colonies. A "super" is the name of the boxes beekeepers use for hives. A deep is usually used for the main hive body. A box that is shallower and takes shorter frames is a honey super. It is placed on top of the hive body. Bees tend to keep their brood below and then put food stores above.

The reason we use shallower boxes is that they are easier to manage. When all ten of those frames are full of honey-filled comb, they can get heavy. When we have to harvest the honey, we have to gently brush the bees off of the frames and carry the honey super to where we process it. That box of frames full of honey is heavy! So we use the smaller honey supers.

We also caught a swarm that was making a home in a decorative wine barrel. The barrel of bees was brought back to the beeyard and the bees were transferred to a small nucleus hive. A nucleus hive is a box that holds five frames instead of the ten that a full-sized hive box holds. They are used to help a colony build itself. The smaller box is easier for a smaller colony to mantain until they build their numbers up great enough to be transferred.

We made a video of this particular swarm relocation. Check it out!

Bee Knowlegeable Answers: Africanized Bees

There are a lot of warnings, news stories, and now even scary movies about "Killer Bees". This is especially true here in Southern California where the Boojum Bees are located. It is a fact that "killer" bees, or Africanized honeybees, are present and likely to stay.

So let's learn about these honeybees this week and think about what kind of impact they are having on our environment. See if you can find answers for the following questions:

1) Where do Africanized bees come from? How did they get here? 
In the 1950s, the Brazilian Agriculture Ministry wanted to breed a honeybee that was better adapted to their climate. The gentle European honeybee, Apis mellifera, did not thrive in the tropical climate of South America.

Across the Atlantic in tropical Africa the people had been getting honey from their own very productive but aggressive native honeybees, Apis scutellata, for centuries. The African people had developed their own ways of dealing with the highly defensive native bees.

In 1956 Brazil asked a prominent geneticist if he could breed a honeybee that was adapted to the tropical climate like the African honeybees, but be gentler and less aggressive like European bees. The scientist agreed to try breeding a better suited honeybee for Brazil.

In 1957 the breeding experiment was underway. Twenty six African queen bees were being bred to European honeybees. Those queens and their colonies were accidentally released into the South American forest.

2) How do they differ from European honeybees?
The most obvious difference in the two species of honeybee is their level of defensiveness. African honeybees have more guard bees than European colonies, and many more African bees will respond when alarm pheromones are released.

There is also a difference in swarming and hive selection. African bees will swarm, or split their colony far more frequently than European honeybees.  While swarming, European bees will only travel a few miles to find a suitable location to build a hive, African bees will travel up to 60 miles before settling. This is how they traveled so quickly through South America to Mexico, and now into the United States.

African honeybees are also much less picky about hive location. They will settle and make a hive out of any rotten log and even in open air in trees. European honeybees are pickier and try to find the perfect quiet, dark, safe place to build their new home.

3) What makes these bees so dangerous? 
It’s not that their venom is any stronger. In fact, African honeybees are smaller than European honeybees and so have smaller venom sacs. They respond to threats in larger numbers and pursue the target much greater distances. They are more sensitive to what they perceive is a threat. After being disturbed, they will also stay in an agitated, attack mode longer than the more docile European species.

Consider that unless a person is allergic, it takes about 10 bee stings per pound of body weight before a bee attack is fatal. That would be about 1500 stings for a 150lb adult or 400 stings for a 40lb youth. European honeybees rarely if ever respond to threats in such numbers. With African honeybees, there is a greater chance of being stung that many times.

What is the environmental impact of Africanized honeybees, a new, introduced species?
When you consider the fact that these bees are voracious foragers and will make a home out of almost any available space, it is thought that these bees will push out vital native bee species by being too competitive.


 Check out this video from National Geographic:

Bee Knowledgeable Questions: Africanized Bees

There are a lot of warnings, news stories, and now even scary movies about "Killer Bees". This is especially true here in Southern California where the Boojum Bees are located. It is a fact that "killer" bees, or Africanized honeybees, are present and likely to stay.

So let's learn about these honeybees this week and think about what kind of impact they are having on our environment. See if you can find answers for the following questions:

1) Where do Africanized bees come from? How did they get here?

2) How do they differ from European honeybees?

3) What makes these bees so dangerous?

Bee Knowledgeable Answers: Defense

1) Why do bees sting?

Bees sting when they are afraid, when they have been harmed or attacked, or when their hive is in danger.

A worker bee that is out scouting or foraging flowers will not sting unless she is harmed, handled roughly or frightened. So if she were accidentally stepped on, she would try to sting. Or if she accidentally flew into a person's hair, she could become tangled up and afraid and then maybe sting.

2) What happens when a bee stings?

When a bee stings, she releases a certain chemical smell, called an alarm pheromone. Other bees that smell the alarm pheromone will come to help fight off the threat.

Her barbed stinger will get stuck in the skin of a mammal or bird. This kills her because her stinger will stay in the other animal when she walks or flies away, pulling part of her body apart.

photo: Waugsberg

The bee's stinger has a poison sac that will pump venom for up to ten minutes after stinging. It is important to remove the stinger from a person's skin as quickly as possible. The method of removal is not nearly as important as getting it out fast.

photo: Siga

The venom of the bee causes an allergic reaction. The area that is stung will swell, itch, and be painful for a few days. Some people are very sensitive to bee venom. These people will have a severe allergic reaction to a bee sting and will need immediate medical care. Bee stings can be deadly for  those people who are allergic to them. Otherwise, bee stings are generally mild and go away quickly.

3) List some other animals and their defensive behaviors.

There are many different kinds of defensive behaviors that animals use. Here are just a few examples:

Skunks use smell to defend themselves. They will spray an especially strong stink at their attackers.

Bulls, rams, rhinoceros and other horned animals use their horns to defend themselves.

Snakes and lizards use their sharp teeth to bite their attacker, often with venom.

Can you think of even more defensive behaviors that animals use to protect themselves?