BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > THE TRADING POST
German Black Bees for sale in the US
Dallasbeek:
Especially when the flies stung them. Understandable. :cool:
Michael Bush:
>"American Indians called them white man's flies"
This always traces back to Thomas Jefferson. I can't find any other source nor his source. Lakota have real names (not made up names like European things) for honey bees, honey and beeswax. One of our words for bee is "wichayazipa". Beeswax is "wichayazipa wigli" which means literally "bees fat". Bumble bee is Wichayazipa hinsma. Honey bee is "wichayazipa thunkce" which can also mean honey bee. That is as opposed to words like "wichayazipa zi" (yellow jacket) and "chanhanpi" (sugar). We did not call them "white man's flies" and we have old stories about honey bees. I suppose it's possible to explain those stories as originally being about ants and adapted to bees... but I don't think so.
little john:
--- Quote from: beepro on January 31, 2018, 09:38:53 pm ---Scotland and England still have them. It would be too far to get them though. Beekeepers don't like those aggressive bees.
--- End quote ---
Perfectly correct on all counts. It's true that in mainland UK we still have some of their genes in the form of mongrels, but no-one in their right mind wants to keep AMM. From a beekeeping perspective they have absolutely nothing going for them: small colonies returning poor honey yields and far too over-defensive. Inspections are a nightmare - clouds of bees in your face, which then follow for a hundred yards or more long after the inspection is over. Quite possibly the world's worst bee.
There are AMM enthusiasts in the extreme SW of England, and in Northern Scotland who are attempting to revive AMM stocks - but they're amateurs with an ecological agenda. No commercial beekeeper or serious hobbyist would want to keep such bees.
LJ
jalentour:
There is a guy in Mississippi selling Russians that are all black. I'm pretty sure they are not "pure" Russians, but he belongs to the RHBBA.
I bought a few nucs from him last year.
Some were aggressive, most were not.
paus:
I had one hive of black bees when I was a teenager They were MEAN and ugly. You didn't make eye contact with them. The "old timers" called them Native bees, but later I learned different. Now I have a hive of black feral bees in a tree on my property. I see them when I am feeding and have "Beelined" them to few large oak trees but never tried to find the exact location. I caught two swarms in traps this week, the middle of March, one of them was about 200 yards from the trees and the other swarm is about a quarter mile from the black bees. They have little hair and are shiny black and a little bit smaller than the "Italian bees I caught in the traps. I would like to have one hive of the blacks for old time sake.
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