# What is the feral bee population in a square mile?



## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

This will depend on terrain such as oak forest, pine forest, desert, open farm land, open pature...

I live in an oak forest and farm land area, any ideas?


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## D Semple (Jun 18, 2010)

It varies, here in KC we have a good number of feral colonies.

Around golf courses and the streamway park systems around town I would venture a guess that there are probably a couple per square mile.

Warm days this time of year (before our nectar flow starts) it's pretty easy to find them by putty out real honey in some feed stations and bee lining them in. I prefer watching the bees coming to the station as opposed to leaving it and back trailing them.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I know one building w/ three or four different colonies living in its' walls. I have seen that happen a number of times.

Why do you ask?


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## BeeManiac (Feb 26, 2012)

how exactly do you bee line?


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## really_so_sorry (Feb 23, 2012)

It depends and it varies widely. Jaffe et al (2009) estimate between 1.5-10.5 colonies/km^2 but this estimate depends on temperature, management regime, and location. Further, there are subspecies differences as well; density of wild honeybee colonies in Botswana is <5 colonies/km^2 and estimates for feral Africanized colonies in the Neotropics span 6–20 colonies/ km^2 while European bees are between<1 to >8 colonies/ km^2 (as referenced by Jaffe et al 2009). 




Jaffe et al. (2009):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01331.x/full


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>Why do you ask? 

Trying to gain knowledge about swarms, guessing how many and from where the ferals might be coming from.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Okay. Thanks. I wondered. I didn't know if maybe youwere writing a term paper or something.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

BeeManiac said:


> how exactly do you bee line?


Catch some bees from a feeder (not your bees) let them go one at a time try to find the hive. 
Do a search here on bee source and on google. Have not tried it but i do watch feral bees at my feeder, come and go from a different direction then my hives.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Attract bees to a food source, some honey, dab some powered rouge on them to make them more easy to see. Wait for their return to roughly calculate distance or time to their hive. Set out another food source and repeat the above. It helps to have two people working on this. When both stations have bees coming and going you can triangulate the direction. Move a distance in the triangulated direction and repeat the first part.

Do this a number of times and you will find the tree or house or apiary.

Have fun.


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## Bsweet (Apr 9, 2010)

If you read the point of view section here on Bee source there is a write up on how to do it and calculate the distance based on round trip time. A pretty good read. Jim

Sorry just went to the point of view section on the home page and can't seem to find the write up, could of swore that is where I saw it.


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## kentuckyjeff (Jan 26, 2012)

very interesting


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## LetMBee (Jan 4, 2012)

sqkcrk said:


> Okay. Thanks. I wondered. I didn't know if maybe youwere writing a term paper or something.


Heh... Bibliography: bunch of people whose names I don't know at beesource.com


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