Africanized honeybees or killer bees
Africanized honeybee, sometimes called killer bee, African honey bee or Brazilian bee, is a quite new pest in U.S. and is a hybrid of one or several subspecies of European honey bee with African honey bee - Apis mellifera scutellata. Those European subspecies could be <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Apis mellifera mellifera, A. m. carnica, A. m. caucasica, or A. m. lingustica. <!--[endif]-->
Killer bees are naturally found in eastern and southern Africa and they are accustomed to a wet and a dry season. In order to have more productive strains of bees that are better adapted to tropical conditions than the European bees, biologist Warwick E. Kerr was breeding different subspecies in Brazil. In 1957 inadvertently the queens and workers of several colonies of A. m. scutellata were released, they hybridised with local colonies and so the gradual spreading of this Africanized honeybee has started. Since then hybrids have been expanding northward through South and Central America averagely 200 miles each year and around 1980 they reached Panama while the first colony in U. S. was reported from Hidalgo, Texas, in 1990. Later, in 1993 this pest reached Arizona and New Mexico, in 1994 – California, 1998 – Nevada and in 2005 they were found in Southwest Arkansas. <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]-->
The main problem with Africanized honeybees is that they are more aggressive than local honeybees (the most common race used in North America today is the Italian bee - Apis mellifera ligustica), defend their nest from intruders up to 50 feet away by stinging in the hundreds, chasing intruders up to a mile and remaining agitated for an hour after an attack. Operating power lawn equipment can induce an attack from as far as 100 feet away. Killer bees are also less selective regarding breeding places and can be found in many manmade structures, tree hollows, even nest close to or in the ground<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->. They also tend to swarm more often than other honeybees. <!--[endif]-->
A. m. scutellata affect the beekeeping industry by competing with A. mellifera, causing them to produce less honey. Also b<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->ecause European honeybees provide 80 percent of the pollination required by agricultural crops, a reduction in their number could lead to reduced yields and other commodities. Beekeeping industry could face loses ranging from $29 million to $58 million annually, according to the Economic Research Service, USDA. <!--[endif]-->
<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->The Africanized bee's "killer" reputation is greatly exaggerated. In isolated instances, people and animals have been stung to death, but most often, the person or animal that died was not able to get away from the bees quickly. Although more people have been stung in U.S. by bees since 1990, no more bee-related deaths than usual have been recorded. <!--[endif]-->
Biochemical comparisons of venoms of Africanized honeybees and European honeybees demonstrate they are nearly identical, but as killer bees sting in hundreds, their attack is more likely to result in toxic envenomation. The first person in the U.S. to die from <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->Africanized honeybee stings was 82-year-old Lino Lopez. On July 15, 1993 he was stung more than 40 times in an abandoned building on his ranch near Harlingen, Texas. <!--[endif]-->
Despite the risks Africanized honeybees are posing, researchers agree that honeybees are economically important and that bee colonies can serve as great indicators of ecosystem stability and flowering plant productivity.
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