NATURE
Faze Online
KILLER
BEES
Ahhh! Run for your lives!
By Julia Follegot
Hot-tempered, ultra sensitive, and
extremely defensive. These best describe the "personality"
of the infamous Africanized honeybees, commonly known as the Killer
Bee. However, this nickname is not completely accurate in describing
their intentions. Due to an experiment gone-wrong in 1956, killer
bees have spread throughout South America, and continue to migrate
north into the southern US. This movement north has enabled Killer
Bees to build colonies. This not only increases the risk of being
stung, but also threatens the bee-keeping industry, in turn threatening
agricultural crops due to the significant drop in pollination
mainly provided by honeybees. It is evident that they are not
only a hazard to society, but also society's economy due to the
rapid spread of colonies. However, the bees are not to be blamed
for this, but humans, for tampering with Mother Nature.
Africanized honeybees are a hybrid of European honeybees and
African bees. African honeybees are suited for survival in tropical
weather. Hence, in 1956, Brazilian scientists wished to improve
their European honeybees by introducing the African honeybee to
their test colonies. This produced the European/African honeybee
known as the Africanized honeybee.
In 1957 swarms of the Africanized honeybee escaped the quarantine
and began to establish colonies. As well, some African honeybee
queens were given to beekeepers. This enabled the bees to migrate
further north into Central America. The colonies began to disrupt
beekeeper's colonies, causing a drop in crop yields.
As the population of honeybees grew, so did the number of bee
stings sustained by animals and humans. Africanized honeybees
are more sensitive than European honeybees. They will sense threat
from greater distances, attack more frequently, and in larger
numbers than European honeybees. Their recent appearance in the
southern US was greatly publicized and Hollywood gave them the
nickname of "Killer Bees". This added an "edge"
to its rather boring name of Africanized Honeybee. This was used
as a marketing scheme for movie producers. This exaggerates their
intentions of stinging. Africanized honeybees do not swarm in
order to find people or animals to attack, but rather, sting out
of defense, and therefore, do not intend to kill.
Africanized honeybees, despite their reputation for being violent
and more aggressive than their European counterparts, are actually
smaller in size than European honeybees. This results in a shortened
development time, enabling Africanized bees to produce larger
populations. This creates a population advantage over European
honeybees. In turn, beekeepers are greatly threatened if killer
bees begin to colonize in their district.
Africanized bees have no need to store honey for the winter.
This is because honey is immediately consumed for reproduction
and population growth. Also, Africanized bees abscond, leaving
no queen, workers, or resources. There are two main causes for
a swarm to leave their colony. These occur when there is a shortage
of resources or when there is a disturbance. Shortage of resources
usually takes place during seasons when pollen and nectar flow
stops or drastically decreases. Disturbance-caused by absconding
occurs when there is a fire, overheating, predation, or pest invasion.
As Africanized honeybees continue to migrate north, there has
been a rising concern for the safety of communities. This problem,
most recently, has effected Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
There are no boundaries for these determined pests. And there
is no telling how far they will go. There have been six reported
deaths in the United States, usually because the victims were
unable to get away, and were stung several hundreds of times.
True, Killer Bees are a threat to society, however, is it not
humans fault doubting nature the way it was created? This is a
sign of what happens when humans meddle with the nature. It is
clear that such "improvements" lead to greater harm
than good, especially when involving such a delicate matter as
the living patterns of creatures.
Where killer bees are headed exactly is uncertain, however the
importance is that people learn from this, and abandon the thought
that nature should be modified. The world has been able to sustain
itself from the beginning of time; however, it has begun to deteriorate
due to human influence.
Also, a reminder that due to their extreme similarities to European
honeybees it is important to refrain from aggravating any bees.
Have any hives found professionally removed, in order to reduce
risks of being stung. Until this problem can be controlled it
is best to be safe than sorry.
