Used to be some black bees show up mentor said must be fron Dadant's Midnight strain they ran.

I’ve kept a lot of strains of bees, but I like the mutt Italian bees from feral Pa colonies the best. Decent disposition, good honey makers. They do, however, tend to have bad robbing instincts The package Italian bees we get from Georgia, they do ok, but don’t seem to have the winter hardiness as our feral bees do. We hit 15 below last winter, with a lot of other cold weather. I did ok, but losses are high here. I think having feral stock improves my winter survival rates.

I can’t prove it, but I think our feral honeybees are dealing better with mites nowadays. In the last couple springs, I’ve been getting double the calls to pick up swarms. And I know of two bee trees that have over wintered colonies for the last five seasons. No mite treatments in those trees.

Were these 5 swarms coming from the same hive, or multiple hives?

How do you tell if they're Africanized or not?

The old Dadant midnites precede my hands on experience. Only recall the name for most part as dad kept some. Back then our cousin ran dadants breeding program to produce them (and starlines) which is how we came by them. Don’t remember hearing what type of stock they originated from but carni and Caucasian would seem logical options

I had a few black German colonies brought back from the PA hills that were kept by grand father of friend of mine. They got mixed into my breeding pool at end of 90s. Back then I wouldn’t have labeled them as exactly friendly but pretty northern hardy which I appreciated. They had been very good in PA but once moved into a commercial migratory world like this state they definitely were stressed by both mites more than they’d seen in somewhat isolation. I still liked them.

In the orchard country during pollination it’s common here to see giant swarms that are from multiple colonies and will cover 8 foot tree from top to ground. Those orchard locations can have large colony counts with bees coming out of CA almonds and southern staging states so populations are exceptionally high making for gigantic swarms when the spring flow goes into overdrive and there are no supers on hives. I use to have some pictures that will try to find and post

well I thought could find some better pics but this was closest i could find for a larger swarm in orchard pollination

We have alot of commercial yards parked on melons south of Macon. I've known of a few folks that have gone down there riding back roads along the fields with empty boxes in the back of the truck.

I can't recall the name but I've spoken to your cousin then several times at state meetings.