
Evaluation and euthanization of a dangerous honeybee colony [video] - CaliforniaKarl
https://youtu.be/O4ldpyIE5t4
======
pks016
Surprised to see this here. I used to work in a bee lab. I understand what
kind of aggression he's talking about. I don't have experience with Malipona
but dorsata are aggressive like this. That's usual for them. Really difficult
to handle.

Sad to see euthanizing the colony. When colony becomes super-aggressive in a
neighbourhood, it's a difficult decision to make. One way is to transfer the
colony to another location and monitor it's behavior.

~~~
oh_sigh
He mentions that as an option in the video, which is possible since he is
located in the relatively remote areas of northwestern NJ, but you still need
almost 2 months to let the hive re-queen, and there's still the possibility of
them finding unsuspecting victims (e.g. hunters).

~~~
pks016
Yeah. In bee keeping it becomes a trade-off I guess.

Generally, bees won't attack someone unless there's unusual activity or
disturbance in colony. Or sometimes this kind of aggression is the inherent
property of the colony due to their life history and genetics of queen.

------
vikramkr
His very next video shows a hive behaving normally and the difference is stark
[0]. One thing to keep in mind for those conflicted about killing off the
colony "just" because it's aggressive: honeybees aren't native to here. They
were brought here by humans as domesticated animals. You're not hurting a
native species or negatively impacting the local ecology - you're protecting
the genetics of a domesticated animal imported for honey production, and
preventing harm to others caused by an out of control bee hive. It's not the
same as killing wolves because they're aggressive where you're messing with
the local ecology - honey bees aren't from the US.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2O15qfA6Eo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2O15qfA6Eo)

------
caiobegotti
That's kind of sad... I'm really into bees and I totally understand the
decision of euthanizing the hive but, still...

This is one of the reasons I love melipona so much, stingless bees depending
on the species can be as productive as these nasty bees from the video (given
eco-restrictions, local market etc). The reason these bees are used is because
the market got so used to them over the centuries in Europe and it was built
around its production rate of honey but if stingless bees were to have the
same incentives they would be as much if not more productive.

I consider these western honey bees to be invasive species and many melipona
can't fight them successfully. Besides, of course, the whole ecology reasoning
behind it as stingless bees sometimes are the only ones who can polinate local
species (at least here in Brazil they are super essential and I am glad their
hives are growing in popularity honey-wise).

Poor bees...

~~~
Timpy
I understand the decision too, you can tell the guy in the video is really
torn about this. He's frustrated but it was clearly a hard decision, he kept
justifying it to the camera but I think he was really justifying it to
himself.

------
tw04
FYI: soapy water kills hornets too - the soap coats their abdomen and they
suffocate. After trying to take out a nest and having an unexpected gust of
wind blow a can of RAID back in my face I decided to look for non-toxic
alternatives to kill off hornets.

A squirt gun filled with a mix of warm water and dawn dish soap works better
than RAID ever did, and if you have an old school super soaker you can spray
from a heck of a lot farther away.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Does this work for paper wasps as well?

~~~
tw04
Yup! Now that you mention it, it was actually paper wasps I was trying to kill
in the RAID incident. I've used it for both.

------
andrewksl
I have always been enamored by hive insects like ants and bees. Each
individual's understanding, effect, even its optical view of the world is
minuscule. The scope and of the individual's existence is so tiny, that the
mark it makes on the world is a floating point rounding error.

In spite of that, the collective is enough to dominate a kitchen or farm or
jungle many orders of magnitude larger. It knows to attack an intruder. It can
give a hairless ape with years of training and three layers of protective
equipment a really hard time. Hell, it can make a stir in that apex predator's
society by reputation alone.

Maybe I find the magnificent result of their cooperation inspiring in its
implications for humanity and the greater galaxy. Maybe I'm just a weird nerd
that knows what supervillain theme I would pick if this computer stuff doesn't
work out.

~~~
elwell
How about hives of H20 molecules? Those things can work together to take out
many thousands of people!

------
motoboi
Somewhere out there is a video of the Super AGI who controls the universe
discussing if they should euthanize this universe or not, because humans are
too aggressive and don't love mathematics enough to have any future.

\-- "What if we dispatch the queens?"

\-- "We already did that a couple of centuries ago. Didn't help."

~~~
eitland
FWIW there are at least a couple of old stories about the world being drowned,
in at least one of them it is because of the behavior of the humans. It
doesn't however include detergent.

~~~
firethief
That's explained by the Anthropic Principle. In the universes where the
almighty added surfactants, we wouldn't be here talking about it.

------
dj_gitmo
For anyone looking for wholesome bee-saving content with a Cajun accent check
out JPthebeeman
[https://www.youtube.com/user/JPthebeeman](https://www.youtube.com/user/JPthebeeman)

~~~
moolcool
Bush Bee Man is great as well
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0xzN4rrvqvNdZRGFPn-
rg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0xzN4rrvqvNdZRGFPn-rg)

~~~
elliekelly
The Bush Bee Man is a true "hacker" too. He's always tinkering with random
pieces of junk to make the exact tool he needs for his beekeeping.

------
ballenf
This is another miracle of the Youtube algorithm. I was recommended this video
2 days ago after having never watched a single bee-anything related video. And
I watched every second of that video with rapt attention.

Only problem is now I'm getting of bunch of beekeeping videos and I still have
zero interest in the field.

~~~
schintan
you click on the three dots on some of the recommended videos and choose "Not
Interested" in case you want to stop the recommendations.

~~~
JoelMcCracken
I keep trying this with Jordan Peterson videos, but somehow YT thinks I still
want to see them.

~~~
highstep
Eventually it'll work. I managed to get rid of Jordan Peterson this way.

------
zxcvbn4038
Worst thing I ever did on youtube was watch a video review of a drone (remote
control flying toy). Suddenly my youtube home is flooded with drone videos,
half the ads are for drones, and outside of youtube I’m suddenly seeing drone
ads all over the place.

I watched another youtube video of a couple indigenous guys building a pool,
and suddenly my wife (who watched the video with me but who does not use the
same device as me) starts seeing similiar videos in in her youtube home.

~~~
jtbayly
What does that have to do with this video?

~~~
chris_wot
He’s getting bee videos.

------
phyzome
That transition around 20 minutes to a normal beehive was amazing, even though
I have experience hanging around bees.

------
arm85
That's funny, I just saw this suggested to me too, but I'm a beekeeper, so I
wasn't expecting this to appear here.

~~~
bredren
In the video, the beekeeper says that the bees are acting very aggressively.
As a layman, I can not tell the difference based on what I'm seeing. Would you
please describe how these bees are acting visibly different from a 'normal'
hive?

What did you think about his decision to first try to replace the queen, but
ultimately destroy the colony?

~~~
arm85
Well the video at 3 minutes in, with the Bees flying all over the camera and
attempting to sting him. You can see them flying towards the chap, and you can
tell when they're doing that that, there's some intent that they want to sting
you. I've noticed that they like to go for the face. Probably something to do
with the chaps breath.

I went on a year long bee keeping course and I've had my hives just for this
season. The hives that I have...I thought were much more aggressive than the
hive I looked after on my course, But they're no where near as aggressive as
those bees. I had a short period of them being more aggressive, and I think
that was due to them taking nectar from oil seed rape (A variety of canola) or
the sugared water that I was giving them. They've much calmed down now.

Compared with when the guy is meters away from the problem hive, with mine
when I've cracked the hive open, doing an inspection, and I'm accidentally
squishing them all over the place. I have a few trying to sting me, but not in
the numbers that he's seeing.

I'm actually working about 10 meters away from my hive, in my garden now, and
I'm not seeing any bees at all.

The only bit of wisdom that I could add to this discussion is that, on my
course, I was told that the more genetic variation the bees have the more
aggressive they are. If you import a queen from Italy, from an Italian
variety, for the first year they'll be calm, but when you get subsequent
generations of queens from that Italian queen they get more aggressive. I
guess hybrid vigour makes them aggressive. I suppose especially so with hybrid
varieties from Africa (Africanised), but I've not heard much about them in my
local area.

~~~
obscura
As I understand it, they instinctively go for the head and eyes of predators.

This is definitely an immensely aggressive hive. In my limited experience,
even the ones I've seen opened up and worked on were not as bad as this.

------
labawi
Autor claims "soap" is not toxic. Real soap is not really toxic, but what he
is using is dishwashing detergent, which is usually notably toxic and not
biodegradable. I wouldn't pour a bottle of it my back yard. Also, it typically
coats greasy surfaces, and probably waxes as well. It makes it easier to wash
off grease, but if you don't/can't, the detergent stays there.

------
randyzwitch
Wearing 3 layers of clothes and still getting stung. I can't even imagine
trying to stay calm, even with the thought of protective clothing

~~~
zaroth
That was one of the interesting parts to me, how he kept consciously reminding
himself he was safe (even though literally under attack) and then leaving the
area to make an important decision so as not to be making it under the stress
of the moment.

------
monoideism
Another very interesting YouTube channel dealing with bees, wasps, and hornets
is:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/628DirtRooster](https://www.youtube.com/user/628DirtRooster)

He removes pest bee colonies from homes and businesses, saving them and
relocating them whenever possible.

~~~
cameron_b
That is such a great channel. His talk-me-through style enabled me to catch my
first swarm.

~~~
monoideism
Very cool!

------
dorusr
Why is it called euthanasia, when the bees cannot give consent? Isn't this
just "Killing a dangerous hive"? I get it sounds less nice, but saying
"euthanizing" is just deceitful language. Words have meaning.

~~~
chris_wot
Gaining consent is voluntary euthanasia. You can have non-voluntary
euthanasia. However, you are correct that this isn’t euthanasia but for a
different reason - you euthanise something to put it out of unbearable
suffering.

This is extermination, not euthanasia.

~~~
jgwil2
It's pretty common to refer to destroying an aggressive dog, for example, as
euthanasia. This is an analogous situation, particularly given that, as
pointed out elsewhere, honeybees are domesticated animals. I think this could
fall under euthanasia for behavioral problems.

~~~
chris_wot
I think that's a mistake in terminology. The dog is not suffering, others are
suffering. Normally when I hear reports of dogs being killed due to
aggression, the word I hear is "killed" or "destroyed".

I think it does actually matter. Killing because of aggressive behaviour is
execution, not euthanasia.

------
EamonnMR
Funny, I just read Robbing The Bees which was a pretty good account of the
practice and history of beekeeping, but lost me in its final chapter which
listed bonkers alternative medicine based on honey and wax.

------
1MachineElf
YouTube recommended me this video last night. Nothing I usually watch has
anything to do with the subject of this video, so it was an odd
recommendation. Strange to see it here on HN too.

~~~
glenstein
I'm seeing this throughout the thread, and also in the youtube comments.

I wonder, do the youtube recommendations 'discover' that a video is going to
be a hit, and then share it with tons of users regardless of their watch
history?

------
emsign
That's how I imagine what normal beekeeping is like.

------
YetAnotherNick
How did he put bees back into the hive? Looking at the attack it was not
looking like they would go back by themselves.

~~~
tectec
What I gathered from the video is that he taped the entrances shut at night
when most of the bees were inside the hive. Any bees that happened to be
outside of the hive when he euthanized it would die eventually from hunger
since they didn't have access to a hive anymore.

------
aimor
I like the YouTube auto-caption: [Music]

------
exikyut
Oh wow. Wowowow. This actually worked:

Open the developer console and paste this in:

    
    
      var context = new AudioContext();
      var videos = document.getElementsByTagName("video");
      var audioElement = context.createMediaElementSource(videos[0]);
      context.destination.channelCount = 1;
      audioElement.connect(context.destination);
    

The audio will now be in both channels.

From: [https://mikedombrowski.com/2019/03/fix-youtube-mono-one-
ear-...](https://mikedombrowski.com/2019/03/fix-youtube-mono-one-ear-audio/)

~~~
sidpatil
Hmm, not sure what issue you were having. I already hear the audio in both
channels without that script.

~~~
bogwog
The first ~2-3 minutes only have audio in one channel

~~~
exikyut
Oh. My ears weren't going to wait to find out. (I needed to raise the one
remaining channel to an uncomfortable level to hear properly.)

------
crimsonalucard5
I wonder what will happen if you use one of those electric fly swatters.

------
forgotmypw17
Euthanizing of Dangerous Bee Hive (2020)

Euthanizing of Dangerous Human Hive (2120)

