Brian, they are most certainly European honeybees, probably Italians, which is the most populous strain. Africanized bees would have hive-defended much more aggressively than these did, and we would not have tried to save the hive if they were africanized but rather just have killed them.

It is true that we have to just live with the africanized bees, like fire ants. When they are found the hives can be destroyed but they swarm and spread and even take over hives at times, so they would be very difficult to totally eradicate.

Frances

Excellent video, by the way. You should document your return trips this week to keep us updated.

- Gerardo

The bees could theoretically have made that sized home in only one year, but because of the look of the comb (quite black) and because of the existence of a queen cell, we think that the bee hive had been there at least 2 years.

Also, my mother has seen bees in the house since she moved in about two years ago.

The queen cell is interesting because it was in a location that indicates the bees had swarmed this year or in the past. The queen cell looks like a peanut, but this one was already broken open sometime ago by the queen emerging or by the bees dismantling it.

We had to throw away about 20% of the honey because it fell in the dirt or was so covered in bees that we couldn’t manage it, but we should be able to get a good 20 pounds of honey from what we did salvage.