Going Hawaiian to find the Queen Bee

Most postal employees who handle letters, boxes and packages probably don't even think twice about the contents of the items that pass through their hands on a daily basis.

But local post office workers must have exercised a little more caution - maybe even hesitancy - when handling a buzzing package addressed to local beekeeping expert Elton Reynolds.

A caged box of 38 live queen bees, which Reynolds ordered for fellow members of the Fort Bend County Beekeepers Association, arrived at the post office April 11 after they were shipped on a two-day trip from their native Hawaii.

The bees don't come with their own leis, grass skirts or make pineapple-flavored honey, but they are known to be much more docile than the native bees of this area.

Hawaiian bees, which can be distinguished by their orange color, are by nature less aggressive than the more common bees you might find in Texas because there are no so-called "killer bees" to be found on the island of Hawaii.

Reynolds said he often buys Hawaiian-bred bees for his own colonies because they're easier to handle and he doesn't have to worry about getting stung while they're buzzing around him.

"Once the Hawaiian bees are in there, you can mess around with the hives without wearing gloves or a veil," he said. "With the Africanized bees, you have to pump smoke in there to calm them down so they won't sting you. But with these, you don't need to use any of that."

While these queens are ideal for beekeepers, the introduction of the Hawaiian queens into a hive means bad news for the queens that currently rule the colony.

In order to replace the aggressive queens, Reynolds said the beekeeper must first kill the old queen before putting in the new one.

In about two months the aggressive worker bees, which have a lifespan of about six weeks, will die off and be replaced by the offspring from the Hawaiian queen to create more gentle worker bees.

Reynolds pointed out another advantage to keeping Hawaiian queens is that at $14 each they are less expensive than other queens sold in Texas.

Other queen bees ordered from various businesses in Texas can cost $18 to $20 each and are typically mated in the wild with the more aggressive Africanized bees.