Natural History

Posted in domestication | Tagged European honey bee, honey bee | 5 Comments

5 Responses

1. on June 22, 2014 at 7:12 pm massugu

   Definitely Italian honey bees.

   
   
2. on June 22, 2014 at 7:13 pm massugu

   When they try to gather nectar from milkweed they often get stuck.

   
   
3. on June 22, 2014 at 7:13 pm Clondaw

   That type of bee originates from Italy. Further north the bees were originally blackThere used to be a race called the British black. The black bees are hardier and take more rain than the Italians. The black races of Apis melifera tend to make less honey than the Italians which is why italians are preferred in commercial honey production. That said most bees when I kept them back the 1950s and sixties were mixed race with both yellow and dark bees making up most stocks. We did tend to requeen using italian queens, though.
   I recall experimenting with hairy grey looking so called Caucasian bees which were supposed to be hardy to cope with cool conditions higher up or further north. I recall getting two queens sent to me from a French breeder in the Pyrenees. They were posted to me in little cages each queen with a bunch of workers to sustain her from the candy in the cage. The cages came through the door postal flap and dropped with a bang on the hall floor. Two small stocks were requeened with them but only one was accepted. I remember this stock gradually changing over to Caucasian workers and they went into winter as a complete Caucasian colony. They came through that winter but sadly not the next one. They used a lot of the sticky propolis which made their hive really messy, but it was a fascinating experiment all the same. Their hairiness made them look bigger even though they must have been standard bee size. The Australian bees now being sent to you in America from Australia are pretty well pure Italians judging by the way they look, ie very yellow.

   
   
   • on June 22, 2014 at 9:36 pm retrieverman

     Yes, we have the black ones. They went feral during colonial times. Allegedly the Germans brought them over, and we call the German bees.

     
     
4. on June 23, 2014 at 8:16 pm Suhail

   You should have posted these last week, which was the National Pollinator Week.

   
   

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