We happened to get two AHB(Africanized Honey Bees) hives. We bought them locally from a person who said they had been caught wild and re-queened(when you re-queen the hive will turn to whatever variety the new queen is within 6 weeks). Either the re-queening didnt go well or he actually never bothered. I checked with my local extension and they said that 70% of our wild bee populatin here are AHB positive.
AHB arent "killers" they dont go after people for no reason and they arent always trying to sting people and pets. They have a bad rep. but infact if they are out foraging you wouldnt be able to tell them from other honey bees. They do take special handling when working the hive because they are going to get aggressive when you mess with their hive. We make sure to have full bee suits and the dog is locked up because she happens to like honey and will try to "help out" when we have the hives open and they will go after her to if she is in the area. They dont chase us really, a few will follow for 10' or so but once we are away from the hive and pose no threat they go back to normal bee stuff.
When not going to work the hives we can walk right up to them and look at the outside and they dont come out or go after us just for standing next to the hive.
The thing about AHB for honey production is that they are not very good at producing honey they are vigorous and hardworking but they work on building lots of brood(babies) than they do honey. While they make enough food for themselves there isnt much extra.
We have recently re-queened them with Russian queens in hopes that they will be a little more docile and easy to work and that we will get some honey production. If you have the time and patience having an AHB hive isnt horrible, its just more work.
With any hive make sure its kept not to close to the house, make sure the entrance is pointed in a direction that doesnt cross the path of people, that is their flight path and with any honey bee you dont want to walk right through the flight path. You wan tthe hive to be able to soak up the morning sun but not get too much direct sun and be in a draft free location.
here is a pic of my sister working the AHB hive and she doesnt even have it open yet but you can see all the bees are out trying to persuede her that she shouldnt be near their home. This is not normal honey bee behavior, with our russians a few come out to see whats going on but they dont all come out and surround us. The AHB bump our face masks trying to get to our faces and yes if we didnt have the suit we would be stung all over.
They arent somthing you would want o mess with if you didnt have the needed gear. Though I will say we are first time bee keepers and while we did do the research these were bought as Italian Honey bees and we really had no idea what we were getting into.
