I remember in the 70’s when it was warned that African Killer Bees were on their way to the US. A queen had escaped in South America, and her progeny were slowly breeding and taking over colonies through Central America.
Well, where are they now?
Didn’t Michael Caine kill them all by attracting them to floating loudspeakers before blowing them up?
The last I heard, they were in Texas. There had been one or two reports of attacks by them on people, but the scenario as portrayed by Hollywood never materialized. This could be due in part to the killer bees breeding with other bees and becoming calmer, but also to the fact that they were never as vicious as the media led us to believe.
I also seem to recall some reports of some in Texas, but that’s about it. I suppose the killer instinct is breeding out or perhaps they cannot take colder climates. Or maybe because of that scare in the 70s (I remember that too), people automatically kill off any killer bee hive that they find.
The so-called “killer bees” are, in fact, all over Texas, and various other parts of the Southwest. The reason you don’t hear much about them any more is that, like the Y2K crisis, the reality turned out to be far less dramatic than the buildup.
The African honeybees DO exist, and they DO attack several dozen people each year, but they rarely cause death or even serious injuries. The problem is not that these bees are extraordinarily aggressive (like most bees, they just want to be left alone) or extraordinarily venomous. The problem is that they attack in swarms, and take quite a while to calm down.
Thus, whereas a Texas kid who threw a rock at a beehive thirty years ago would have gotten a few stings, a kid who threw a rock at an African “killer” beehive would get dozens of stings, because they’d attack him en masse, and would keep chasing him a lot longer than regular American bees would.
Anyway, like the Y2K bug, there have been real problems with these bees… just not the kind of huge, terifying problems the hype led many people to expect. Life goes on, in Texas. Actually, fire ants remain a much greater nuisance than these bees.
The latest outbreak was in the hills of western Virginia, where a swarm killed a goat and put four people in the hospital.
The link to the Richmond Times-Dispatch is:
http://www.timesdispatch.com/virginia/bees20.shtml
As the article relates, they do kill, but their main threat is to U.S. agriculture as they displace European bees that farmers (and gardeners) use to pollinate their plants.
Entomologists from Virginia Tech think that they destroyed the swarm but locals aren’t so sure. The question will be whether these bees can survive the upcoming winter.
Just out of curiousity, are there any native American bees that produce quantities of honey? Or was all the pollinating done previously by other insects and bumblebees and the like? I’m just curious because evey year I hear about how the honeybees are all dying from some parasite or the weather or whatever else and the media acts like modern agriculture is on the brink of collapse and I can’t help but wonder how North America managed to be a fertile land for millions of years without European honeybees to save it.
I’m in Texas, and have encountered these “killer” bees a few times. My experience with them has been the same as with any other bees. Leave them alone, and they leave you alone. I remember as a kid, the media made it sound like they were bloodthirsty, vicious little creatures. They’re not. Usually, when somebody gets stung by these guys, the person started it.
IIRC, before European bees were introduced, much of the pollination of native plants was done by various species of flies. Again IIRC, the Aztecs ate honey (or a honey-like substance) produced by a native stingless bee. The books I read these tidbits in both seem to be missing from my shelves, so I could be wrong on both counts.
Stingless bees are still used in parts of Brazil for honey production. Their honey fetches up to 10 times the price that honeybee honey does. See http://www.ifas.ufl.edu/~mts/apishtm/papers/teres.htm#14
Bumblebees and butterflies were important pollinators before honeybees were introduced. I distinctly remember reading about flies also being important, but I can find no reference to it now.
The bumble bees, hover flies, wasps, butterflies, and assorted loacal fauna were (and are) quite sufficient to pollinate the flowers of North America as they occur without agriculture. Honey is nice, but it is not the major product of bees.
The main issue is that we have converted large areas to the production of crops that require specific pollination en masse. This includes a huge variety of fruits in orchards and a surprising number of grains and other crops. The way that we have handled this pollination prior to the current plague of mites was to have professional beekeepers move their hives from orchard to orchard and field to field. This ensured that when all the plants in a specific location came into bloom, they were all pollinated to produce fruit or seed at the same time. The local insects will continue to pollinate those plants, but they will not do it on the large scale or on the “arranged” date, so crops will be smaller and will not ripen consistently, together (making the harvesting of those smaller crops more difficult).
Africanized bees are here big time in southern/central Arizona. We assume any swarm to be of the killer variety unless proven otherwise. It’s almost become the norm. Emergency services like the fire department no longer do bee removal as there are plenty of private companies that specialize in the work. astorian had it right that it’s just part of the environment now. The Southwest has lots of bitey/stingy/pointy things that are potentially deadly but we deal with it.
Africanized bees are currently in a variety of locations in Southern California, including the L.A. and San Diego areas. I recall having heard of maybe two attacks over the past couple year, but my memory might not be the best source for this info. Just leave 'em alone, and I don’t think you’ll have any problems.
Mike Davis’ Ecology of Fear has a section on the threat the Killer Bees pose to L.A., but his information is not necessarily to be trusted (see “City of Frauds.” The Economist, December 12, 1998, p. 31).
Assuming Davis has done his research right this time, the bees can be a big problem; he claims there were 600 serious attacks in Managua in 1988 and 1989, dozens of deaths in Venezuela, and 175 people killed in Mexico over the past decade. Jack Hazelrigg, of the Greater L. A. County Vector Control District, has said that media-induced hysteria after highly publicized attacks is a greater worry than the bees themselves. But the bees are there to stay, and may colonize the rest of California over the next few years.
According to today’s Washington Post, they’re in southwestern Virginia.