What's the most practical way to deal with them? I have dozer work to do where bees just settled in. My dozer doesn't have a cab, but my loader does. We have a much bigger problem with them this year than I've seen any other year out at my pit. Last week I got in my loader (it has an enclosed cab) and dumped a couple 4 yd. bucket loads of dirt on a problem area and about a thousand of them that didn't get buried came after the loader and got all over it as if they really wanted me. They were MAD.
Then the week after that, my dozer operator was suprised by another bunch that he ran into. They chased him all the way to his pickup and about ten of them followed him into the truck. You can't even tell the bees are in there until you disturb the darn things. Then all hell breaks loose. I don't think these particular bees I'm dealing with are africanized, but as I understand it, 20% of bee colonies down in my area are in fact africanized.
What makes this extra tough is I'm dealing with quartered tire pieces that I use as partial fill to (legally) reclaim my land. We got a little behind on our dozer work with all this unusual rain we've been having in the past 40 days or so. We've had around 20 inches of rain in the same time that we usually only get about 2 inches. And about three colonies came and settled in throughout my working area. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where they are since there's so many crevases for them to be.
With all the heat we get down here, wearing a bee suit while operating seems unrealistic. We only have about 50 more hours of catch up work then this won't be such a problem. I can't wait until I graduate from this dozer to one with a cab and A/C. In fact, the oilfield company that sold me my current dozer, did so because some of their operators had some pretty bad bee encounters out on the ranches. So he was in the process of replacing all his older non cab stuff with new D6R cab machines when he sold me mine.
/rant
Then the week after that, my dozer operator was suprised by another bunch that he ran into. They chased him all the way to his pickup and about ten of them followed him into the truck. You can't even tell the bees are in there until you disturb the darn things. Then all hell breaks loose. I don't think these particular bees I'm dealing with are africanized, but as I understand it, 20% of bee colonies down in my area are in fact africanized.
What makes this extra tough is I'm dealing with quartered tire pieces that I use as partial fill to (legally) reclaim my land. We got a little behind on our dozer work with all this unusual rain we've been having in the past 40 days or so. We've had around 20 inches of rain in the same time that we usually only get about 2 inches. And about three colonies came and settled in throughout my working area. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where they are since there's so many crevases for them to be.
With all the heat we get down here, wearing a bee suit while operating seems unrealistic. We only have about 50 more hours of catch up work then this won't be such a problem. I can't wait until I graduate from this dozer to one with a cab and A/C. In fact, the oilfield company that sold me my current dozer, did so because some of their operators had some pretty bad bee encounters out on the ranches. So he was in the process of replacing all his older non cab stuff with new D6R cab machines when he sold me mine.
/rant