Bee Wars

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by Brigid Jackson in Cape Town, Honey Bee

Tags

African bee, Apis mellifera Capensis, Apis Mellifera Scutellata, Bee, Cape bee, Cape Town, environment, honeybee, nature

For some time now I have been puzzling about my bees. I have re-located 3 swarms to the Deep South. All of them settled in quickly and soon the hives were buzzing. After about 3 months I noticed that the hives appeared to be less busy. Upon examining the hives I found they had collapsed.
I began searching for answers to my problem, but found very little information on the internet.



One day, about 3 months ago I noticed Bees foraging on the Honeydew which is secreted by Aphids. I found this peculiar, and researched further and found that the Cape Bee forages on Honeydew. This led me to further information about South African Honey Bees.



: Apis Mellifera Scutellata African Honey Bee

Cape bees and African bees together. The cape bees have darker bodies whereas the scutellata bees have orange bodies.

There are two different species of Bees which are native to South Africa. Apis mellifera Scutellata (or “African bee”) and Apis mellifera Capensis (or “Cape bee”).

The African bee is an aggressive bee with a hardy strain and capable of producing large crops of honey. It has more of a yellow striped abdomen compared to the Cape Bee.. The Cape bee is generally confined to the western and southern Cape regions particularly referred to as the Fynbos region running in an imaginary line between Vredendal on the western Atlantic coastline across to Willowvale on the eastern Indian Ocean coastline. The African bee covers the region to the north of this area although there is hybrid zone overlapping the two regions where the two hybridize.

The Cape bee tends to be a more docile bee (although can also become aggressive when provoked), distinguished from the African bee by a darker abdomen and are sometimes referred to as “black bees”. It has a unique characteristic in that the worker bees (females) have the ability to produce both male and female offspring and thus able to re-queen a colony which has become queenless. The downside of this characteristic is that it has the ability to parasitise scutellata colonies. Capensis laying workers invade and subsequently begin to lay their own eggs, challenging the scutellata queen’s ability to control the colony. The original colony becomes overtaken by Cape bees and will collapse. Signs of a Capensis invasion are: multiple eggs observed in cells, (may even be laid on top of pollen), raised capping of brood cells, reduced activity within the hive, and non-aggressive bees.