My wife and I have been beekeeping for over 4 years. We consider ourselves experienced. We have a number of very strong hives on our property in LA. All of them were swarms we captured, and one is a split from one of those swarms. By and large, they haven’t given us much trouble. We refer to them as “feisty”; however, this Spring one of those hives has become very defensive. We went to inspect the hive, and the bees went ballistic. Now, four days later, when we try to enter our garden, this hive sends out guard bees who aggressively chase us and our dogs. The final straw was today, when I was in the garden working. All was well, then out of nowhere, a bee came up and stung me in the head. My eye has swelled shut. I generally live by the “live and let live” code, but not any more. I will re-queen this F-ing hive.
Stung in the eye lid….DOH!
Africanized bees in Mexico
Re-queening is when you open the hive, locate the queen, and pinch her (see DEATH). Then you insert a new queen in a cage with a marshmallow /candy plug. The existing bees then smell the new queen and accept her. They then eat the candy plug and release her. She then lays new eggs and the cycle continues so after 6-8 weeks, all the hostile bees are gone, replaced by new docile stock.
The question remains, “Why are some bees so mean?” Purdue bee researchers may have found the answer
If you are new to beekeeping in the Southwest, I strongly suggest you buy package Italian bees. Avoid catching a feral swarm. Sometimes they break bad with African Hybrid genes. But if you do have a once feral hive and they begin to get defensive, then re-queen. Within 2 months you will have a brand new genetic profile.
Lisa March 12, 2018 at 3:47 pm
I had a very similar experience. These bees were golden with 2 black rings followed by solid black on the remainder of the abdomen. I could not find a similar looking one on the net or asking around.
They took over two of our hives – requeening did nothing. I think they killed her to make their own queen – not really sure.
All our hives have been okay unless we opened the the boxes – but these bees would attack (and I mean attack) within 3-4′ from the hive – they attacked my dogs too. I had to throw the dogs in the pool to get them off.
We live on an acre and they would chase me to the front door – from the rear of the back yard.
IT WAS CRAZY
tandafarms@gmail.com March 28, 2018 at 5:49 pm
Yes. Feral (Africanized) bees will kill the introduced queen if certain steps are not taken. Glad you didn’t get seriously hurt.
Justin October 24, 2018 at 12:50 am
Sounds familiar, I live in South Africa and have 200 hives of Apis Scutelatta (African bees) You need to manage them differently that is for sure, smoke African bees more especially before you start – smoke all colonies well, don’t squash bees or bang boxes, avoid messing in the brood box of strong hives on a honey flow, preferably work them in the late afternoon rather than in the morning (If they do go crazy at least its later in the day) Avoid overcast humid days, Not all African beehives exhibit the same aggression some colonies are more feisty than others. The main advantage is that they are extremely varroa mite resistant and hardworking, they can produce well if you use good swarm control methods. We keep Apiaries isolated at least 200m away from animals (esp. horses), children dogs, mowed lawns and tilled fields for this reason. It’s genetic defensive behavior built up over centuries to ward off predators like honey badgers and African tribes.