Killer Bees look like common Honey Bees, but their DNA and enzymes differ from honey bees. Honey bees are productive. Humans depend upon them to pollinate our fruits and vegetables. Killer bees are aggressive, do not survive in cold winters, and often abandon hives, so that when they mate with honey bees they can reduce the production of honey.

History: According to the Smithsonian Research archives, in 1956, African Honey Bees were imported into Brazil, with the idea of cross-breeding them with local populations of Honey Bees to increase honey production. In 1957, twenty-six African queens, along with swarms of European worker bees, escaped and have been found in South America, Central America, and eastern Mexico. In 1990, Killer Bees reached southern Texas, appeared in Arizona in 1993, and found their way to California in 1995.

Recently, a man in Palm Beach County was stung by thousands of killer bees, as he was clearing a field. What is being done to prevent the spread of these fearful insects?

There are solutions to this problem being experimented with in the United States. The first is termed "drone-flooding," which involves maintaining large numbers of common Honey Bees in areas where commercially-reared queen bees mate. This process would limit the mating possibilities between Africanized drones and European queens. The second strategy is "re-queening" frequently, where the beekeeper replaces the queen of the colony, thus assuring that the queens are European Honey Bees and that mating has also occurred with European drones.
BEE TRIVIA (courtesy of Wikopedia)
Yellowjackets and hornets, especially when encountered as flying pests, are often misidentified as bees, despite numerous differences between them.

Bees are often affected or even harmed by encounters with toxic chemicals in the environment, such as fertilizers and insecticides.

Despite the honey bee's painful sting and the stereotype of insects as pests, bees are generally held in high regard. This is most likely due to their usefulness as pollinators and as producers of honey, their social nature and their reputation for diligence. Bees are one of the few insects used on advertisements, being used to illustrate honey and foods made with honey.

Although a bee sting can be deadly to those with allergies, virtually all bee species are non-aggressive, if undisturbed, and many cannot sting at all.

Information for this BLOG also derived from Smithsonian Magazine

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