Why SAVE the bees?

Let’s ask this question a different way: “Why NOT save bees that are healthy enough to be living on their own, without needing pharmaceutical assistance from a beekeeper?”

On the one hand, the US Department of Agriculture says that one out of every three bites of food in an American’s diet is dependent on pollination by honey bees. If this be the case, then the bee rescue work that American Bee Control pursues–now in our second decade of full-time beehive removal–is among the most important “save the bees” efforts in the entire world. The success of our ongoing bee-breeding program speaks for itself: We keep the bees (without selling or renting them to others) so that we can pursue a thorough selection program designed to isolate the best-behaved, hardiest, and most productive strain of bees. Given the well-established reputation that feral bees of the Southwestern United States have for resistance to disease–together with their built-in countermeasures against parasites and other threat–it’s no wonder that ABC has been able to achieve success in deriving the “stainless steel bee” or “the bee of the future” in conjunction with our beekeeping partner: Wagon Wheel Ranch of Arizona.

USDA position on the importance of honey bees to USA food security can be found at USDA.gov, such as here and here.

…on the other hand, if you are visiting this web page because unwanted bees are a current concern:

Please know that just because American Bee Control never, ever, ever kills the bees, doesn’t mean that we have an opinion on what you do with YOUR bees. The laws in Arizona and most states that regulate bees and beekeeping provide for the extermination of unwanted bees. If you decide that bees that have colonized your property are a nuisance to your concerns, we feel it is not our place to voice any opinion on what you do with them. You may want to take into consideration the following factors when deciding whether to have the bees saved, versus having them exterminated or continuing to live with bees long-term.

1. Many jurisdictions that regulate the keeping of bees require that the bees be kept only in modular, manipulable structures. This means that the hive must be able to be opened and inspected routinely. The biggest reason for these requirements is to enable government or non-governmental agencies to assess whether the bees are carriers of diseases that could enable an epidemic among neighboring beehives. In the Southern and Southwestern United States where the Africanized Honey Bee is the main subspecies of honey bee found in feral (wild, unmanaged) sites, the physical safety of the public is also a factor. The bottom line is that, even if it seems legal to do so, it is unwise to allow a bee colony to persist in an unmanaged condition, regardless of how “tame” they have been behaving or how long they have persisted in that location.

Please see “What happens to the bees” after they go away with American Bee Control

More info on ABC/s hunt for the “21st Century Bee” and “How American Bee Control saves honey bees” can be found elsewhere on our site.

(c) 2024 Pantano Capital, LLC, dba American Bee Control.