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RE: How To Catch Wild Bees | Homing Our Feral Swarm in the Woodland Apiary (Vlog)
This is so exciting. It will be fun to follow the progress of this first swarm. To actually see how native bees build their hive and produce honey. You'll bring the other two home in 10 days then? I'll be staying tuned for this adventure ox
it is SO exciting! we have another one we caught at a nearby river and we are thinking of getting it tonight! so perhaps by morning, we'll have 2 swarms in hives on our land!! we have another one nearby we'll have to take to leo's first for 5 days and then bring back. 3 swarms this year and plenty of time to catch more!! Yay !! <3
Wikipedia says that there are 20,000 species of bees. Is there anyway to figure out if a feral bee colony is native? I understand that bees coevolved with the local flora. Does cultivating native bees help the local environment?
hello @yintercept, thanks for joining us. feral bees indeed do mix genes with colonies that aren't native so the genes definitely are intermingling, but one thing about swarms is that they're usually more resilient as they are surviving without human interference. the genes will inherently be stronger. This helps the local environment as there will be more bees which equals more pollination and more productivity within their local ecoystem (more fertilization = more fruit set, etc). Honeybees aren't native to N America although they've been long since introduced here. "native bees" are usually referring to mason bees, carpenter bees , bumble bees, etc. These feral honeybees we're catching are a mix of introduced Apis melifera (honeybee) that have swarmed from kept hives and mixed with naturalized colonies. Does this answer your questions? thanks for stopping by!
We have Rocky Mountain Bee Plant and it attracts the most amazing selection of bees, making me feel sad that I know so little about the subject.
there's so much to learn!