# What Happened to the "Killer" Bees? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 13, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356 "2009-05-13T22:53:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356/21 "2009-05-14T22:49:50Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Why do bees produce so much honey, and how starving was the first person who tried to get it out of a hive? They store honey to get them through the winter (or in the tropics, to get through the season when not many flowers are in bloom). I suspect humans might have first foraged on the remnants of hives broken up by [honey badgers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_Badger) after most of the bees had left. Once humans had fire, hives could be smoked out. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356/22 "2009-05-14T23:14:56Z")
Apparently, the Africanized bees are cold and moisture sensitive. If the winter is too cold AND there’s too much annual rainfall, they don’t spread. [Here](http://www-atlas.usgs.gov/articles/biology/a_bees.html) is a US Department of the Interior article, which also notes that the Africanized bees are somewhat more resistant to a certain bee parasite than European honeybees. I live in Texas, and I’m allergic to bee stings, so I have an interest in this subject. I take care to leave bees alone, and I don’t question them about their ancestry. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356/23 "2009-05-15T03:17:25Z")
[Fire ants got 'em.](http://www.slate.com/id/2105698/) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356/24 "2009-05-15T04:29:22Z")
> [@ghardester](#): > > Y2K year 2000 Didn’t occur because it was solved via a massive effort of elbow grease on the part of programmers. > [@](#): > > hole in ozone layer Largely corrected by laws limiting the use of particular gasses. Though you will note that Australians still have an incidence rate of melanoma ~2.5 times as Americans. > **[Ozone depletion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Public_policy_in_response_to_the_ozone_hole)** > > Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a lowered total amount of ozone in Earth's upper atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone layer) around Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon is referred to as the ozone hole. There are also springtime polar tropospheric ozone depletion events in addition to these stratospheric events. > The main causes of ozone depletion and the ozone hole are manufactured chemicals, esp... [http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/](http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/) (A sharp increase in the size of the ozone hole between 1979 and 1983 is made to plateau) [http://www.coolibar.com/australian-experience.html](http://www.coolibar.com/australian-experience.html) [http://cco.iftydev.pcsnap.com/cms/one.aspx?pageId=9522](http://cco.iftydev.pcsnap.com/cms/one.aspx?pageId=9522) > [@](#): > > the coming ice age Was a fringe theory that never had large scientific support. > [@](#): > > global warming Is not a fringe theory and has massive scientific support. > [@](#): > > assault weapon proliferation No idea. > [@](#): > > the ‘new’ bee colony collapse disorder Is an ongoing problem that is being researched. > **[Colony collapse disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse#Possible_causes_and_research)** > > Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is an abnormal phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a honey bee colony disappear, leaving behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees. While such disappearances have occurred sporadically throughout the history of apiculture, and have been known by various names (including disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease), the syndrome was renamed Col... > [@](#): > > 2012 end of the world Nutters. > [@](#): > > Swine flu Being researched in case it actually turns into an issue. * * * While **panic** might not be necessary for any of these things, many of them are real issues and didn’t disappear because they were never real, but rather because people researched it, found a solution, and implemented it. Unfortunately, failures and epidemics sell newspapers, success stories by-and-large are uninteresting to the layperson and hence go unpublished unless you actually Google it yourself. Here is the Wikipedia article on [Africanized bees](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-killer-bees/496356.md?page=1)