HB usurpation
Hiya, Dewey.
Very much enjoyed reading your series of articles on the history of the Africanized honey bee in the Americas, and particularly their status in the USA [April through July 2026].
A short anecdote regarding the joys of beekeeping in AHB country:
I successfully requeened eight colonies on 19 June 2026. (I keep a log.) During an inspection on 29 July I noticed a large, dark unmarked queen in one of the colonies. Yes, that’s right … one month and 10 days after a successful requeening an AHB cluster had usurped one of my colonies ($50 down the drain). Since then subsequent inspections have demonstrated the colony is feral … they are mean. My other seven colonies have transformed into pleasant European colonies.
Scott Pugmire
Virden, New Mexico
Dewey responds:
It is a challenge. At least they waited one month!!!
Dewey Caron
Eugene responds:
Thanks for sharing that, Scott. Wyatt Mangum has detailed such usurpation by AHB in our pages in the past.
Eugene
From Scott:
Yes, Wyatt Mangum’s excellent series on colony usurpation gave me a heads-up as to what occurs in my neck of the woods. Not the first time I’ve had a European colony usurped by an AHB cluster, and I’ve managed to stop a few in progress. Maybe Dr. Mangum or some other subject-matter expert could suggest practices that prevent usurpation. Would be great to have some suggestions on keeping European colonies in AHB country.
It’s a challenge!
Scott
Wyatt responds:
Hello everyone,
Thank you for including me on this issue, which essentially is the problem of protecting a valuable breeder queen from loss by usurpation.
For several summers leading to 2009, I had numerous strange swarms, which were small swarms found on the ground and under hives. These swarms were coming to my apiaries, not leaving from them. Then I observed a swarm take over a host colony in the summer of 2009, and I began to assemble what occurred during colony usurpation.
The bees of my first usurpation were gentle with an unremarkable pigmentation pattern. Since then the U-swarms I have seen look like Virginia feral bees.
Acceptance of the U-queen can occur quickly. Initially, both queens are balled (the U-queen and host queen, aka mother queen). Results from the bee house with the observation hives showed the U-queen can be accepted in about 13 hours. The host queen remains in a ball until she perishes (in about three days).
Bees balling a laying queen rarely sting her, although the aggressive workers look pretty hostile. In a typical case, I carefully pick off the bees from the ball and recover the queen, but I am careful about removing the last one or two bees in direct contact with the queen. Some beekeepers put the ball in water or gently smoke the ball to distract the bees. I don’t use those methods because I am watching the bees and their interaction with the queen. Some balls are very tight around a queen, others less so.
During the takeover, bees of the two groups fight. Dead bees accumulate in front of the host hive. The dead bees can resemble a mild pesticide kill.
While not completely tested, to stop a usurpation I would use a screen floor, without a solid floor below the wire. I would have the hive about 20 inches off the ground to provide easy flight access for the swarm to miss the hive entrance and fly under the hive. I’ve been in the planning stage for testing screen floors to protect queens in multiple apiaries of frame hives. I plan to run the experiment for most of the summer, and maybe into early fall.
In a “normal” usurpation, the U-queen is balled right when she enters the host hive, probably by her U-swarm for her protection. Under the floor screen, this ball will most likely fall on the ground. As a general point, when working around U-swarms, queen balls detach from clusters and are found on bottom boards and on the ground. So look down; make sure you don’t step on any queen balls. They can be hard to see in tall grass.
If that ball around the U-queen forms inside the hive, the usurpation will probably succeed and the host queen — the valuable queen — will perish. The above predicts that trapping the U-queen even under a queen excluder over the bottom board will not spare the host queen, even though the U-queen cannot get into the broodnest.
Most of my learning about my usurpation comes from direct encounters with it or from seeing the need to protect expensive queen bees. Please keep me in the loop. Thank you.
Kind Regards,
Wyatt A. Mangum, Ph.D.
