Got Bees? Call a Beekeeper

a very good thread.

considering the fact that many of the honeybee hives have been decimated due to a parasitic mite infection or simply disappear due to colony collapse disorder, it is in everybody's best interest to save a hive rather than destroy it.

In my area of the country, we have a great deal of fruit farming. Honeybees are the most common pollinators and the loss of honeybees would be devastating to the farmers and quite possibly the entire local economy.

In actuality, honeybees are normally quite docile. If you place sugar water on your hand, they will come to feed. If not disturbed, they will generally not sting. (I would simply say they will not sting unless disturbed but as soon as I do, somebody will get stung for no reason and make me to be a liar).

as DIY states, instead of killing the hive, contact a beekeeper. Some will remove the hive for free in exchange for keeping the hive.

Unless you can identify a true honeybee, always use a great deal of caution. Do not mistake a honeybee for any other bee or wasp as many other bees and wasps are not very friendly and can attack with little or no provocation.

Also, if you are in an area known or suspected of having Africanized honeybees, always use caution. An Africanized honeybee is much more aggressive than the European counterpart (which is what most of the honeybees are in the US). They are generally indistinguishable from each other unless you are trained to be able to tell the difference. Even then, there are mistakes made.

While an Africanized honeybee is no more venomous than a European honeybee, they are much more aggressive and more likely to attack in large numbers, which is how they can kill a person.

an africanized be is a honeybee but it is a different subspecies than the typical European honeybee normally found in the US. They are the result of an attempt to breed a hybrid of Euro and African honeybees in Brazil. Some of them escaped in 1957 and have ever since been moving northward. They eventually reached the southern US and are now starting to spread across the southwest US.

as I said before, most people cannot distinguish the difference between the 2 species. It generally takes a trained person in a lab to determine if a honeybee is of the africanized species or one of the many Euro species already in the US.

The biggest problem with the Africanized bees is that they are hyper-aggressive. They are no more venomous than a Euro B but they are much more protective of their hives. They will attack with little or no provocation and are relentless in their aggressiveness. I had read that one person was followed and attacked for over 1/4 mile. The reason they are termed "killer bees" is the fact that they do attack so much more aggressively. While their venom is no more potent than a euro B, the sheer quantity of stings causes people with mild reactions to react much greater, generally causing anaphylaxis, and sometimes death.

If you and or your family are allergic to bee stings, I would hope you each carry an epi-pen http://www.epipen.com/ Epinephrine is the treatment for anaphylaxis and a person with a severe reaction can die quite quickly. Quick access to epinephrine is the only thing that can save them sometimes. The Epipen is a self injection of epinephrine.

If your bees were africanized bees, they should be destroyed. Not only are they hyper aggressive, they are less productive than the established bees in the US. They will also take over an established Euro B hive converting it to an africanized hive.