Killer Bees

I've mentioned before the rubbish the UK hack press produce about bees and swarming as 'clickbait' and from time to time they make reference to 'Killer Bees' and the most disgusting example came from the Star, who for some reason describes itself as a newspaper rather than an emergency Andrex substitute.

There is no doubt that people can die from 'bee' stings but this needs to be given a bit of perspective. In 2010 Government statistics reported that  'five people suffered fatal contact with hornets, wasps and bees”, without being able to say which species accounted for how many.

The same report also said:-

- 35 people were killed in bathtubs

-  four women were killed by “ignition or melting of nightwear”

- thirteen died accidentally after falling off a cliff.

Equally there's no doubt that bee stings are painful but it takes over 1000 stings to kill a normal healthy adult [which therefore excludes a Star reporter].

Honey bees are not aggressive and only sting if they or the hive is under threat.

However there are bees that push this to the limits and in America there are what have become known as Africanised bees or Killer Bees.

Its a general true-ism in bee keeping that the more defensive the bee, the more honey they produce.

I had a colony I called the Bedford Bastards that produced more honey than any colony I have had. Problem was they were very defensive. VERY defensive, and on one unforgettable day they had a real go at me. It was a very humid day and they started to be defensive as soon as they saw me. Rather than just fly about me as the other bees did, all I could hear was the 'whack' as they attacked me. They followed me back to the house [150 yds away] and wouldn't go away. Normally they leave me alone after a few yards.
I couldn't get back in the house as they wouldn't leave me alone and I finished up walking across two fields and then in a big loop through the village to try and lose them and get home. As bees are clones of the queen, their temperament is the temperament of the queen.

I don't have her anymore.

In the 1950's the Brazilian Government undertook a program to try and increase the productivity of their bees to provide pollination resources to support their growing agriculture industry. The native, European based bee, wasn't really suited for hot climates so they employed an award winning Brazilian biologist called Warrick Kerr to come up with a solution.

In view of what happened its perhaps a shame he wasn't called Wayne.

African bees are notoriously defensive but also produce large quantities of honey and Kerr brought 26 queens from Tanganyika to start a breeding programme in a 'secret' research facility near Sao Paulo.

Here things descend into a cheap Hollywood horror flick.

Apart from when they swarm, queens do not leave the colony but because of the risks involved, the Brazilian hives had some sort of queen excluder on their entrances to keep the queen and drones inside.
According to Kerr what happened next was that a friendly local bee keeper came across the hives, saw the queen excluders and wanted to help so removed them. Ooops.

So, a local beek wandered into a secret research facility unchallenged and then took it on himself to remove dozens of queen excluders. Really??????????

Anyway the bees escaped and started spreading across the country. The African drones are stronger and fly faster than the native drones so the genetics of the African bee were introduced into the native bees and Africanised Bees were born.

Due to the nature of the bees they spread quickly and arrived in America in 1985 and have reached California. Their progress north is limited by their tolerance of cold weather but have continued to spread through South America. Ironically they are killing off unique strains of stingless bees that were the subject of research by .........Warrick Kerr.

As the bees spread through North America headlines like these became more common and the Killer Bees legend was born.

Perhaps surprisingly AB's are smaller than their European cousins and their venom is the same. What makes them different is their easily provoked and extreme defensive reactions.

Some of their characteristics are:-

 - can create colonies in a wider range of environments than European bees.

 - swarm far more often than European bees increasing the rate at which they spread and the number of colonies. If stressed the whole colony can abscond.

 - react much more violently to changes in colour and sound. There are regular stories of the bees being provoked by the sound of lawnmowers or cars backfiring.

 - react to intrusions 50 ft away.

 - can chase you for up to a quarter of a mile.

 - their attack pheromone is far more potent than the European bees so you attract more bees if you upset them.

The bees have produced something of a dilemma for American bee keepers. On one hand they are very difficult to manage yet on the other hand they produce a lot of honey. However the reality is they are here to stay and there's nothing can be done about them.

To Kerr's credit his programme was a success in that the Brazilian output of honey went from 47th in the world to 7th but this is something of a pyrrhic victory.
As the problem spread he received a lot of personal attacks from the Brazilian press accusing him of incompetence and introducing a Frankenstein alien species. A lot of this may have been because he was an outspoken critic of the Brazilian military governments civil rights record.
The Africanised bees are hardly a 'new' species and are cousins of the indigenous bees in Brazil.
Honey bees in North America are not a native species and were introduced by the Europeans. Apparently native Indians called them the 'white man's fly'.

So could they be introduced here? Could some nutter smuggle in some African bees and let them loose? However disappointing to the Star it may be, probably not. The weather in this country is too cold for them so we will have to do with threats from Asian Hornets.
Or 'Horror Hornets' as the Star will probably call them.