![]() "But while substantial hybridization does occur when AHBs first move into areas with strong resident EHB populations, over time European traits tend to be lost."ĭeGrandi-Hoffman and Stan Schneider, a professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, have been collaborating the past 3 years to figure out why AHBs replace EHBs rather than commingling. "Early on, we thought the mixing would reach a steady state of hybridization, because we knew the two groups of bees can easily interbreed and produce young," DeGrandi-Hoffman says. She is research leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona, and ARS national coordinator for AHB research. But it appears that interbreeding is a transient condition in the United States, according to ARS entomologist Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman. Many experts expected that the farther from a tropical climate AHBs spread, the more they would interbreed with EHBs. This has always been a major question for researchers-what, if any, type of interbreeding would happen between AHBs and EHBs and how would this affect honey bee traits that are important to people, such as swarming and absconding, manageability for beekeepers, honey production, and temper. EHBs that escaped from domestication are considered feral rather than wild.Īfricanized honey bees are so called because it was assumed that the African honey bees spreading out from Brazil would interbreed with existing feral EHBs and create a hybridized, or Africanized, honey bee. Those that flourished here before the arrival of Africanized honey bees (AHBs) are considered European honey bees (EHBs), because they were introduced by European colonists in the 1600s and 1700s. These honey bees reached the Brazilian wild in 1957 and then spread south and north until they officially reached the United States on October 19, 1990.Īctually, all honey bees are imports to the New World. Now, 14 years later, scientists with the Agricultural Research Service and elsewhere have uncovered many answers, but they have also come upon some new and unexpected questions.Īfricanized honey bees-melodramatically labeled "killer bees" by Hollywood hype-are the result of honey bees brought from Africa to Brazil in the 1950s in hopes of breeding a bee better adapted to the South American tropical climate. Africanized honey bees had arrived.īeekeepers, farmers who depend on honey bee pollination for their crops, land managers, emergency responders like fire and police, and the public all wanted to know what they would be facing as Africanized honey bees began to spread. With that identification, Africanized honey bees were no longer a problem we would have some day. In 1990, a honey bee swarm unlike any before found in the United States was identified just outside the small south Texas town of Hidalgo. ![]() What's Buzzing with Africanized Honey Bees?
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