Where are the bees going? (Late Winter Losses)

[10framer]

dallas,
my understanding is that the queens emerge a day or two faster than european bee queens and that the drones are smaller or faster (not positive on that) or something else that gives them a mating advantage.  so, in theory if i bought a queen that had mated with some africanized and used her for a breeder i would be breeding more and more africanized bees each year because the drones would be out competing the european drones each time.  i may have oversimplified it but i think that's more or less how it works.

[splitrock]

So far, I have had about 50% losses from what sounds like similar situations. And it is still a while before anything blooms up here.

[chux]

My mentor, who lost 90% of his commercial hives, raised his own queens last season. The year before that, he may have gotten queens from a supplier in Georgia. Not sure on that. Most folks seem to believe it is too cold up here during the winter, for AHB to survive. So a swarm shouldn't come up here. but I guess you could import an africanized queen and she could give it a go. I had not considered the drought-induced swarm abscond nature of the africanized bee.

I know the smaller operation that lost bees, got his queens from central NC. A local breeder. but that breeder does go down to georgia to pick up early queens, too. Surely his stock is mixed with some of those early queens over the last few years.

I would be interested to hear how much honey is left in the hive, when an africanized colony absconds due to drought. Do they wait until their supply of honey is exhausted before leaving? Do they leave 20 pounds of honey in the hive as they depart? Seems to me that they would time their departure to be able to consume nearly all of the remaining honey. Anybody hear of a study on this?

[10framer]

i would have never even thought about it if jim hadn't mentioned it.  i think a lot of the early queens are actually mated in or close to florida.
i'm in the middle of the state and i have capped drone brood but no drones.  seems to me that all the queens that are available now could be coming from ahb areas unless they are artificially inseminated.
it would only take a queen that mated with one africanized drone to start the domino effect in an operation.  maybe jim has discovered the real source of "ccd".

[Dallasbeek]

The problem with that theory, if I understand correctly what you stated, is that ccd has been reported all across northern Europe as well as in the US.  I don't think they got queens from the southern US.