tiny ferals

danno · June 23, 2011, 01:56:10 PM

There is a bee tree next to one of my job sites that I have been going to 2 times a month for the last 11 years. Every other winter the colony dies and is replaced by a new swarm. This happened again this year. The hole in the large maple is at eye level so I get very close look at the activity. This year the bee's are very small in size. I would bet that they are about 1/3 smaller that any I have or have ever seen. I have a friend that works in a lab and has a scale that is so delicate it can weight a stroke of graphite from a pencil on a pc of paper. I plan on catching a couple of these ferals and weighting them against bee's that come from my colonies. 1/3 smaller I'm betting

FRAMEshift · June 23, 2011, 04:24:01 PM

Good genes to have. Any way you could get some eggs out of that tree?

danno · June 23, 2011, 04:32:32 PM

Quote from: FRAMEshift on June 23, 2011, 04:24:01 PM
Good genes to have. Any way you could get some eggs out of that tree?

the tree is on state land so no eggs. It will be a area that gets swarm traps next year. I am not on the small cell band wagon so have never seen the bee size from small cell. For those that are does it produce a smaller bee? It will be interesting to see how these small bee's handle the mites. I know they will be there next year unless the tree falls but the spring after that will tell the mite resistance story.

caticind · June 23, 2011, 04:58:28 PM

For an experiment I dumped a few packages onto plastic small-cell foundation this April, then expanded with foundationless frames. So not "strict" regression, though they did build worker cells that on average were .1 smaller than package bees reared just on foundationless. The bees are somewhat smaller....maybe 1/4. Jury is still out on mite resistance.

FRAMEshift · June 23, 2011, 05:01:55 PM

We do natural cell (foundationless) and the bees are much smaller than those from standard foundation. I don't know what the mechanism is but it appears that bees on natural comb have less trouble with mites. Probably a combination of genetics and the effects of cell size on pupal hatching time and the hygiene of cell cleaning.

Haddon · June 23, 2011, 05:10:47 PM

I have mine on true 4.9 and the bee size is small I mean really small so much so that my wife saw old standard last year and thought they were drones.
Some of the wild ones I have caught over the past 2 years have been this small or smaller. I measured a piece of old comb out of one of the swarm that died it was way less than 4.9 but that is a average I find naturally comb size is all over the place but with most of it less than 5.4.

D Semple · June 23, 2011, 06:06:34 PM

I've been doing cutouts and catching swarms this year, almost all have been tiny feral bees (which we seem to have an abundance of). I have 15 new hives from them and most of the brood comb I've measured falls in the 4.7mm - 5.0 mm range.

Don

T Beek · June 24, 2011, 06:21:57 AM

Cool picture. "small bees make small cells, small cells make small bees" Ferals are the best example of nature dictating what's best for bees, whether beekeepers get it or not.

thomas

muradulislam · June 27, 2011, 05:36:31 AM

if these bees are that much smaller then i think it is another type of honey bee. it is found in our area too. the hives are very difficult to locate. in our locality honey from these costs double that of asian or europeon honey bee and is considered to be a great medicine. can you post some pictures of them.

CapnChkn · June 27, 2011, 04:02:57 PM

Muradulislam, I'm not sure if the bee you're talking about is the same, but in that area of the Earth you have 4 species of Honey bee. 2 of them live in cavities, 2 of them build comb on branches. We have only the European Honey bee, Apis Mellifera. The bee Danno is referring to a breed of this bee.

There has always been a different kind of bee here in the western hemisphere, without a stinger. This bee can bite however. It's hard to find now, because of habitat destruction and the proliferation of the "Killer" breed of Apis Mellifera, better known as an Africanized Hybrid or Africanized Honey Bee abbreviated as "AHB".

The "Royal Lady" Stingless Honeybee, Melipona beecheii and M. yucatanica, were cultivated in the tropics for thousands of years. They are harder to raise, and produce much less honey. Not baited by man made equipment, they are cut from the tree they make their homes in and kept, often times as pets, under the eaves of the houses their keepers. The log hives can be passed down in the family, and may be 80 years old.

"Honey for the Maya"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingless_bees
http://www.melipona.org/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0628_050628_maya_bees.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050615062105.htm

T Beek · June 27, 2011, 06:03:40 PM

CapnChkn: Hey thanks for the interesting lesson :).

thomas

muradulislam · June 28, 2011, 02:48:29 AM

Thanx for the info Capnchkn, is it safe to assume that Royal Lady Stingless Honeybee is endangered because it is my observation that there population is declining in our area too :-X. what can be done to help them. although my sympathy with them only originated now when i got interested in beekeeping but i'll love to help them.

CapnChkn · June 28, 2011, 08:25:10 AM

Thank you T Beek!

Um...

Muradulislam, What kind of honey bee are we talking about when you say:

Quoteif these bees are that much smaller then i think it is another type of honey bee. it is found in our area too. the hives are very difficult to locate. in our locality honey from these costs double that of asian or europeon honey bee and is considered to be a great medicine. can you post some pictures of them.

Information of species of Apis living in the area of the Earth you live in can be found here:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0083e/X0083E02.htm

Are the bees you're talking about stingless? What are their habits? Do they live on branches of the trees, or in hollow parts of them? Do they look anything like the photos in the .PDF linked below? You might need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to see it.

http://edgecombe.ces.ncsu.edu/files/library/33/Species%20and%20Races%20of%20Honey%20bees.pdf

I don't think you would see the "Royal Lady" bee in Pakistan. They're native to Central America, and the Amazon basin. There are stingless bees living close to your area, I'm not familiar with their habits.

As for helping the native bees to survive, education is the key. The more people are aware of the destruction they're doing to the environment, the better we will be able to manage our impact on it.