Come with me in the wayback machine to the days of my innocent youth in the late 70’s; when persisent rumors abounded about African bees somehow intermingling with their European cousins to produce a fiercer breed – and that these buggers were headed to the Americas.
Granted, bees are small and the Atlantic is vast, but even assuming favorable trade winds I expected landfall by now. It seems that the danger of Africanized bees in the U.S. was a bit overstated. What happened?
The danger may have been overstated a bit, but these africanized or “killer” bees have arrived!! RUN!!!
They moved into the south west US a few years ago, and are slowly spreading north. A few unlucky people have been attacked (don’t recall hearing about any deaths yet).
The problem with these bees (try saying that several times quickly!) is that they are MUCH more aggressive than our docile, cute little honey bees… and are much more likely to attack you for little or no reason. They will attack en mass, and pursue you for a long distance as you run away (picture how unpleasant it would be to get stung by several hundred bees at once, and when you try to run away, a cloud of them follows and continues stinging you).
Another problem with these bees (there it is again! I kill myself!) is that they release a pheremone when crushed that triggers a swarm attack. Sounds like a sci-fi movie concept, but it is true! So you get stung by a bee, swat it, and suddenly a cloud of angry bees decends on you… not a happy scenario!!
Last summer, a friend in I were camping in the desert east of San Diego, CA, and we saw a sign warning that africanized bees had been seen in the area… we kept our eyes peeled! As we poked around some old buildings, we heard a distinctly killer-bee-ish buzzing noise from inside the wall of one crumbly old building. We beat a hasty retreat, and had no problems…
They didn’t just somehow intermingle, what happened was that the honey bees in South America (Brazil I think)were too week, and therefor couldn’t produce enough honey. So man, in his infinate wisdom, decided that if they bred these week bees with the more agressive bees from Africa then the bees would become stonger and make more honey. Well they certainly became a more versital species. They have now moved up and can be found throughout the South Western US.
The danger was overstated. The bees have reached the U.S., but as they have moved north, they’ve been breeding with native bees. The result is that, though they are still more aggressive that native honeybees, they are not dangerously so. Indeed, there were bees in the U.S. for years (I’ve seen them referred to as “German bees”), that were more aggressive than honeybees – much like the killer bees are now – and no one seems to have cared much.
IIRC they escaped from some lab in Brazil into the wild and have been steadily moving up North. There *have8 been some pretty bad attacks on humans, even as far north as the DC area, but I do not know if any have been fatal.
The answer is yes, what they they predicted has happened. We just don’t talk about it every day.
i live in Las Vegas. There are almost weekly reports of local attacks. A local basic cable station has regular “how to recognize and what to do” programs. Killer bees are alive and well in Las Vegas and I’m not leaving my house.
Just to clarigy matters a bit, scientists were trying to breed the african honeybees with native honeybees, because the natives didn’t produce so much honey. The african bees, while aggressive and mean, produced a lot of honey.
The intended result was to get docile bees that produced mucho honey, but instead, we got mean badass bees which produced little honey.
Ha ha.
jb
yes, clarigy. I mean what I type.
There have been reports about people being killed by bee stings here in California, but I don’t know if those are necesarrily atrributed to the Africanized bees or if someone just went and did something like step in a hive or simply go in to anaphalactic shock.
Regardless, the “killer bees” are here in California, but they haven’t taken over the state, destroyed the agriculture, or forced the governor to ask the president to call in the military.
Doesn’t it seem astounding to anyone else that not ONCE in this string (nor in any American news report I have ever seen) has ANYONE ever mentioned the experiences of AFRICANS with “Africanized killer bees.”
There are, believe it or not, many millions of people living in Africa today. They have been living there, coexisting with “killer bees” for years. In relatively recent years (i.e., since the 1960s), many Americans have spent time in Africa as Peace Corps Volunteers teaching Africans how to keep bees. (There are “traditional” bee keepers in Africa but they use a technology that does not maximize the yield of honey.) These American bee keepers do not bring American bees with them. They use native bees. Despite the scare stories, I have never heard of any American Peace Corps Volunteer bee keeper being killed by bees. (I have, however, seen a photo of a Peace Corps Volunteer bee keeper in East Africa wearing a “beard” of bees. This is done by putting a queen in a small cage and then attaching the cage to your chin. The bees will swarm around the queen forming a “beard” on your chin.) I do know of one Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa being killed by bees but he was not a bee keeper and was evidently trapped up in a tree when he riled a hive.
If the African bees are not a big problem in Africa, why should we fear them so much here?
I lived in Sierra Vista, AZ for a year recently. This is about 8 miles from the Mexican border, SE of Tucson, near Bisbee and Tombstone. As a wildlife biologist, I spent a lot of time outdoors. Part of my standard issue gear was a bee hood. Do not believe those who dismiss the danger that can result from pissing off an Africanized bee.
During the short time I was in Arizona, there were 5-6 reports of attack swarms. Two I remember distinctly. One guy was in his backyard and sprayed a bee with Raid or something. Well, the bee went back to the shed in the next-door lot, summoned the swarm and came back after the guy. He made it into the house, but his dog was stung to death. The guy reported that when he looked out the window, all he could see was a dog-shaped mass of bees.
Another guy found a hive/swarm in his BBQ grill. Not being too smart, he tried to put one of those big lawn/leaf bags over it, I guess to capture the bees. He missed. I think he was stung to death.
A few years before I got there, one of the horses we could use to take into the mountains for surveys was stung to death by a swarm. The closest I came was when a swarm flew overhead of a field partner and me while doing surveys. It sounded like one of those speedboats you see in the shows. A rising crescendo of bzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ! Talk about an immediate rush of adrenaline! We just froze in horror and looked at each other. Luckily for us, the swarm payed us no attention (Actually, you are safer when the swarm is flying in search of a place to make a hive. the bees tend to be less territorial than if you disturb an established presence).
I can’t speak for other areas further north, but Arizona scientists have estimated that 95% of the bees in that part of the country are Africanized. Maybe the strain is diluted as the bees breed and move further north.
I think the reason the situation doesn’t get much air time nationwide is that the scare is limited in range, and certain movies have overstated the national danger. But in the hot spots, the danger is known to just about everyone, and is taken as a matter of course, much like other potentially harmful critters such as rattlesnakes. You know they are there and you know not to piss them off.
I thought this problem was all cleared up by famous entymologist Dr. Brad Crane some years ago. Didn’t they lure all the bees to an oilslick and set them on fire? I think it was on the news.
Pity about the victims, though. An Air Force Base, a school full of kids, even a commuter train! There should be a monument.
Problem is that the toxins released by the burning oil slick caused the spontaneous mutation of some pirahana in a nearby lake that rurned them into giant flying piranah. Those bastards managed to take out asn entire resort community before being eaten by a 70 foot long great white shark in Florida which in turn destroyed a new aquatic theme park and was subsiquently eaten by some gian radioactive ants in Uma Arizona but not before the giant radioactive ants spilled a radioactive coolant tank’s contents into a bay in Maine which caused a local squid to grow to well over 100 feet, and on and on and on…
I live in Texas, and I can attest that the “killer” bees are here… they just aren’t as bad as originally advertised. The most recent stats I’ve seen say that a total of 9 Americans have died from Africanized bee stings. Tragic for the people involved, yes, but not the bloodbath some hysterical reporters had people worried about.
The problem is NOT that Africanized bees are more venomous or even much more aggressive than other bees. Like MOST honeybees, the African variety just wants to be left alone to gather pollen and make honey. The problem is that when they DO get riled up, they attack en masse, and take longer to calm down. If you rile a European bee colony, you’ll get 3 or 4 stings. Tick off the Africans, and you’re liable to get DOZENS of stings.
A genuine menace, but NOT serious enough that any Texan goes around in a state of terror, or even THINKS about moving north.