The African honey bee has become a major concern for society over the last 20 years. The only problem is that people don't know much about its origins, how to distinguish it from a regular honey bee, how aggressive it can be, or how it spread to America. The purpose of my paper is to provide insight into the adaptations this insect has incurred to become one of the most feared insect alive.
The African honey bee belongs to the family Apidae in the order Hymenoptera and is classified as Apis mellifera scutellata. Although it is native to the tropical savanna country of eastern and southern Africa it was brought over to Brazil in 1956 by Dr. Warwick E. Kerr in an attempt to create a superior honey bee that would work harder, produce more honey and survive better in the tropical climate. However, the bees are known for more than just their honey making capabilities and their survival in the tropical climates, African honey bees are known to swarm excessively and be extremely aggressive. The cross breading between the European honey bee and the African honey bee was going as planned until a local beekeeper accidentally freed 26 swarms of killer bees from the quarantined area. Upon a visit he noticed that the queen excluder, which prevents the queen from getting out of the hive, was in place. Thinking that the bees were European honey bees, the local beekeeper removed the excluder because it wasn't the season for the excluders to be used. Since that time the African honey bees had spread rapidly through out South America extending their range by about 300 miles a year. By the 1980s, the bees had reached Central America and began their colonization of Mexico. In 1990 the first swarm was found in the United States. The bees spread from Texas to New Mexico and Arizona and then into California by 1994.
Originally honeybees were not native to North or South America, Africa or Europe. In fact, bees migrated from Asia into Europe and Africa.
