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Old 04-08-2012, 15:38   #1
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Bee Swarm

Most unusual thing today. I'm upfront adjusting anchor chain and notice a swarm of bugs...bees it turns out. Best I can tell, the swarm in the picture set up in less than 5 minutes. Exhausted our 3 cans of wasp spray, continued later with water and we think we've gotten rid of most, but not all. All day event! They keep finding different things to get attached to.

Anyone with advice on how to get rid of the remaining bees? We are in Curaçao. They are not especially aggressive, but still not a welcome addition....

Thanks!
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Old 04-08-2012, 15:41   #2
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Re: Bee Swarm

A queen may have arrived and will draw bees in. Alternatively, if the land is very dry they may be attracted to fresh water sources on your boat.
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Old 04-08-2012, 15:52   #3
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Re: Bee Swarm

Call a local beekeeper....they may be able to adopt the colony, perhaps even pay you for it. At least supply you with some honey and ever useful beeswax and, yum, honeyomb!
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Old 04-08-2012, 15:55   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Target9000
A queen may have arrived and will draw bees in. Alternatively, if the land is very dry they may be attracted to fresh water sources on your boat.
I think it was a queen and company looking for a new home. No water here...no rain for several days, so that was not an attraction since everything was dry.

This is another picture of the swarm taken only a few minutes after they arrived on the fly bridge Bimini.
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Old 04-08-2012, 15:58   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by micah719
Call a local beekeeper....they may be able to adopt the colony, perhaps even pay you for it. At least supply you with some honey and ever useful beeswax and, yum, honeyomb!
We just arrived here and not sure if Curaçao has any? No local phone anyway. Just got far enough along to make it to the dingy.
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Old 04-08-2012, 16:04   #6
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Re: Bee Swarm

Once watched a guy pull up on a motorcycle, jump off and with no protection of any kind, sawed a branch off with a swarm on it, asked for a cardboard box and some duct tape, stuck the branch on the box like trying to get butter off of a knife which made bees fall like globs into the box, then he blew into the swarm and it opened up under his breath while he looked for the queen on the branch then shook some more into the box. He then set the branch on the box and said if he got the queen into the box then by morning they would all be in there and they were. He taped up the box, strapped it on the back of his motorcycle and left with all the bees. It was the coolest thing to watch the bee whisperer at work. They turned out to be one of his best hives.
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Old 04-08-2012, 16:31   #7
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Re: Bee Swarm

Worth a try, though.....bees are having a hard time with the varoa mites and GM crops and pesticides. No bees means no harvest and that means Disaster.

A quick Bing search dug up these links as a possible avenue:

Marcel Sommer | LinkedIn
Hendrik Kolenbrander | LinkedIn
GUÍA

This one not so likely, but ya nevver know:
Bee-keeper at work - Curaçao Photos

My Spanish is terrible, but apicultuoro seems to mean beekeeping, and apiterapia would mean beesting therapy. Your internet and Spanish are likely better than mine....go on, I dare you to befriend a Spanish beekeeper, or even a Dutch one....
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Old 04-08-2012, 16:43   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by micah719
Worth a try, though.....bees are having a hard time with the varoa mites and GM crops and pesticides. No bees means no harvest and that means Disaster.

A quick Bing search dug up these links as a possible avenue:

Marcel Sommer | LinkedIn
Hendrik Kolenbrander | LinkedIn
GUÍA

This one not so likely, but ya nevver know:
Bee-keeper at work - Curaçao Photos

My Spanish is terrible, but apicultuoro seems to mean beekeeping, and apiterapia would mean beesting therapy. Your internet and Spanish are likely better than mine....go on, I dare you to befriend a Spanish beekeeper, or even a Dutch one....
Thanks for the links. Our Spanish is weak, Dutch non-existent. We found a Facebook page for a Bee Encounter tour with a local number, but have not contacted them.

At the moment, post sunset, they seem to have departed. But I've not climbed up on the sunroof hardtop yet to see if they vacated the top of the Bimini and Radar Arch area. There were lots there in the afternoon. We are hoping in the morning it will be all over! In the meantime, we are accumulating unplanned generator hours on a closed up boat....
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Old 05-08-2012, 05:55   #9
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After dark, they went to sleep. This was what was left....

The humans won the battles 4-0, but it took all day and into the evening. Still sweeping away the dead ones.

Anyone ever seen this before on a boat at anchor? I feel a little bad, but the Mar Azul has no room for a bee colony!
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Old 05-08-2012, 06:24   #10
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Re: Bee Swarm

Just use a vacuum cleaner will suck the bees up, no sprays needed.
Most unfortunate for the poor bees just doing their thing.
Bees have been dying off.

http://www.hcn.org/issues/342/16891

For several years here I did not see a single bee. Then last year saw a few honey bees.
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Old 05-08-2012, 06:59   #11
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Re: Bee Swarm

Quote:
Originally Posted by ebaugh View Post
. . . . I feel a little bad, but the Mar Azul has no room for a bee colony!
Hiya Bob - I used to keep bees in the UK on my farm (40 colonies)

Just to let you know what happened.

The bees had been living somewhere quite nicely when their honey production and storage outstripped the number of places they could keep the honey so the queen laid queen cell eggs for that colony to survive and, with a few thousand bees, they all stocked up on honey and flew away. This is the swarm you had alight on "Mar Azul". In this situation they are totally harmless unless of course you start going in and killing them and they then might start to attack you because they are only trying to defend and protect their queen.

This is how you see photographs of men who have a 'beard' comprised of a swarm of bees. They are totally harmless in a swarm.

Whilst they are resting on your yacht, they send out hundreds of worker bees in all directions and these bees are instructed to 'find' a suitable place to permanently set up home in somewhere dry, dark and empty.

If a bee returns, this bee then tells others of her find and a few bees go and inspect this location until hundreds of bees then go and look. Finally the complete swarm including the queen which has been resting on your yacht will take off as suddenly as it appeared and go in one direction. They can be resting whilst looking for up to two or three days.

A swarm of bees will travel as a swarm at about 4 or 5 mph at about 20 to 25 feet above ground level and swarms will only travel between 10am and 2pm local time. Quite a rare sight and if you have not seen a swarm in flight you have to stop and think for a moment as to what they heck is happening??? Worth getting the video camera out if you get time.

For the next couple of days or so, you will get returning bees who had been send out to look in another direction and they will return to find the queen and all the other worker bees have gone but sadly, the queen and the rest of the swarm do not leave any note or forwarding address telling of the new house they have moved to, it is very sad.

A worker bee will only live in total for about 30 days. After it hatches in the hive, it spends 5 days on feeding duties and hive cleaning duties and fanning to control the temperature of the hive. For the next eight or ten days it will become a hive guard bee repelling all attacking foreigners and other robber bees. During this time, it 'learns' about its location and sun angles as it flies away from the hive a few tens of yards and returns to defend the entrance of the hive.

The remaining part of its life it is sent away foraging for nectar and pollen and it will do this until its wings become ragged and it cannot fly. It will die on one of these missions never to return. When opening up a hive, you can see the bees with ragged and torn wings.

The queen can live for up to seven years.

If you get stung by a honey bee, it will also leave a 'sting pheromone' on the location of the sting on your body. This pheromone will be picked up by others who will then home in on it and try to sting in the same location! Out of choice, they will try and sting black surfaces in preference to white as this is the same color of a bears nose and honey robbing bears have sensitive noses. Bee keepers wear white!

Of course, you have to be very aware of any African 'Killer' Bees which are EXTREMELY aggressive in your area and if you are attacked by them, jumping overboard and stay underwater is your best defense. You must have been lucked with the type you have banished from your yacht. Always best to leave bees well alone if you are unsure?

Best you read the Wiki report on their slowly spreading north from Brazil into the southern USA so they would certainly inhabit your location! THEY ARE VERY AGGRESSIVE AND DANGEROUS, leave well alone!

Africanized bee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Out of interest, they also have another pheromone which they leave on flowers. A honey bee, whilst out foraging for nectar will alight on a flower and sup of the nectar which is there for the taking. As it does so, it leaves a "I have taken all the nectar" pheromone. It is a short lived pheromone and any following bee on alighting on the same flower will know immediately that the nectar is taken and straight away take flight to find another flower. You can see this 'touch and go' type of flying if you look at a flower bed when there are loads of honey bees out collecting nectar and pollen.

I hope this is of help to you and others who might see a swarm of bees?
.
.

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Old 05-08-2012, 07:07   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dlockhart
Once watched a guy pull up on a motorcycle, jump off and with no protection of any kind, sawed a branch off with a swarm on it, asked for a cardboard box and some duct tape, stuck the branch on the box like trying to get butter off of a knife which made bees fall like globs into the box, then he blew into the swarm and it opened up under his breath while he looked for the queen on the branch then shook some more into the box. He then set the branch on the box and said if he got the queen into the box then by morning they would all be in there and they were. He taped up the box, strapped it on the back of his motorcycle and left with all the bees. It was the coolest thing to watch the bee whisperer at work. They turned out to be one of his best hives.
Great description, cheers for writing it down.

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Old 05-08-2012, 07:14   #13
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Re: Bee Swarm

Quote:
You can see this 'touch and go' type of flying if you look at a flower bed when there are loads of honey bees out collecting nectar and pollen.
In the last five years I doubt that I have seen more than a dozen or so bees. And I used to see hundreds of them every year.
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Old 05-08-2012, 07:40   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lenseman

Hiya Bob - I used to keep bees in the UK on my farm (40 colonies)

Just to let you know what happened.

S/Y "Surabaya Girl" - 2DTW3 - Portsmouth UK
Thanks for the detailed description. That was what I figured happened after poking around the net a bit. But I think your description is the best of the bunch.

Perhaps we should have left them alone...but where would we go? I would have needed a new home for the Admiral and our 2 dogs until they left. And I was a bit worried they would discover the large forward fly bridge locker with vent slats much larger than the bees and set up shop in there.

I think you are right, a few bees seem to be returning, maybe 20-30, nothing like the thousands we had yesterday. I'm still surprised though since today it's blowing about 20 with frequent gusts to 30 knots. Tough flight for a little bee.

I don't think these were African bees or I would have gotten a few stings for sure.
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Old 05-08-2012, 07:43   #15
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Re: Bee Swarm

SOAPY WATER will chase em away and spozedly keep em away--this from local souls---btw--IT WORKS!!!!!!!
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