Types / Races of Bees

The Africanized honey bee, also known as The Killer Bee. The Africanized bee in the western hemisphere descended from 26 Tanzanian queen bees (A. m. scutellata) accidentally released by a replacement bee-keeper in 1957 near Rio Claro, São Paulo State in the southeast of Brazil from hives operated by biologist Warwick E. Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa. Hives containing these particular queens were noted to be especially defensive. Kerr was attempting to breed a strain of bees that would be better adapted to tropical conditions (i.e., more productive) than the European bees used in South America and southern North America. The hives from which the bees were released had special excluder grates which were in place to prevent the larger queen bees from getting out but to allow the drones free access to mate with the queen. Unfortunately, following the accidental release, the African queens eventually mated with local drones, and their descendants have since spread throughout the Americas. Because of the media attention received, Africanized Bees have been given a bad name. This is not to say that they can’t be more dangerous than standard honeybees, their representation has simply been blown out of proportion. There have been several more recent breeding programs that have produced a more gentle form of this race. This gentler form of bee has even become one of the more sought after honeybee races in regions of Brazil.

The Buckfast bee is a honey bee developed by "Brother Adam", (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey. In the early 20th century bee populations were being decimated by Isle of Wight disease. This condition, later called "acarine" disease, after the acarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, was killing off thousands of colonies in the British Isles in the early part of the 20th century.

Brother Adam discovered, that the surviving colonies were crossings between italian and native black bee. Buckfast bees' origin is today in these few surviving hives. Brother Adam became interested in honeybee breeding and he started in very early stage to use the isolated Dartmoor mating station for breeding purposes. There he could mate the selected queens with the selected drones. Drones and queens only mate in flight, and they can fly over 10 km in search of each other. Brother Adam also became interested in the various honeybee races in the world and made several long journeys in Europe, Africa and Middle-East searcing for pure races or otherwise interesting local stocks. The book "In Search of the Best Strains of Bees" tells about this huge and very important work. From these journeys and with the help of new contacts he imported new stock from other nations. Every new beestrain or beerace was first crossed with the existing Buckfast Bee. The new desired qualities were, in most cases, passed on to the new generation and the new combination was then made stable with further breeding work. Every crossing with a new race took about 10 years before the desired genes were fixed in the strain. Little by little - this work took him half a century, during which he managed to create this vigorous, parasite-resistant honey bee known as the Buckfast bee. It started as a hybrid, but today it is a manmade beerace among the other more natural ones. However, the extensive import of bees and queens, which started in the second half of the 19th century, has mixed all beepopulations living near human settlement.

The Buckfast bee is popular among beekeepers and is available from bee breeders in several parts of the world. Most of their qualities are very favorable. They are extremely gentle, and some authorities rate them higher than the Italians in most categories. Their main drawback is that they are very liberal in their application of propolis to inner surfaces of their hives, thus acting to defeat one of the main purposes of the modern beehive, i.e. that combs should be easily removable for inspection.

Carniolan Honey Bee

• Earlier morning forager
• Forages on colder and wetter days than most other bees
• Overwinters well on small stores, as queen stops laying in the fall
• Explosive build up in early spring
• Exceptionally gentle and easy to work
• May interrupt brood rearing during times of drought
• Does not typically propolize heavily
• Creates less brace and burr comb
• Crosses well with other varieties
  
• Likely to swarm unless carefully managed
• If pollen is scarce brood rearing greatly diminishes