Talk:Africanized bee

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Contents

[edit] Accidental?

An anonymous user wrote:

 (Some scientist believe the release was not accidental.)

I'm sorry, but you're going to have to provide a little more substantiation than that to support the allegation. I am a hobbyist beekeeper, intensely interested in the topic, follow multiple journals and have never heard even a hint of this assertion. (Your other suggestion for wording is a good point. Edit made.) Rossami 20:42, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality ?

This article is full of assumptions, rumours, and lacks NPOV. The tips belong to a seperate article.


[edit] Wasps vs. honeybees

Removed the two tips below because they apply to wasps, not to honeybees (Africanized or otherwise). 1) Honeybees do not nest in the ground. 2a) Honeybees very, very rarely seek out sodas. The carbonation, acids and other ingredients make them very unattractive to honeybees. 2b) Even if a honeybee were trapped, it would not sting to get out of the soda can because the act of stinging will kill the bee. Honeybees sting to defend the queen or the hive. They almost never sting while foraging.

If anyone is interested, these comments can be pasted into the appropriate article about wasps. Rossami

[edit] Inspect before Mowing

The low freqency sounds of an engine driven mower can be especially disturbing to bees. Look around for swarms or nests before starting. Yellowjackets will often nests in holes in dry ground.

[edit] Take care of Soda

People are often stung on the lips or throat (a potentially dangerous sting) when returning to a neglected can of soda pop. Often a bee or wasp will enter the can and be unable to exit.

These are yellow jackets, not bees. Here is more information: http://goodbugpage.org/wonderful_wasps5.htm Pollinator 02:53, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't this entire section go in a separate article? Bee stings don't apply just to Africanized bees. neckro 22:57, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Selective breeding vs. natural selection

Changed paragraph regarding evolution of aggressiveness/defensiveness of African (not Africanized) bees. Previous version emphasized human actions over environmental forces; replaced "selective breeding" with "natural selection". JHCC 20:24, 18 May 2004 (UTC)


Selective Breeding is a good thing Look we can get a very superior bee if we gentled down the Africanized bee but not to much since the anger management issue of the Africanized bee makes it what it is. So breeding is okay but let some of the bad selections escape into the wild so that they can turn into a new style of bees so there is a greater but significantly wider choice for beekeepers.

Telioty 20:02(GMT) 30 October 2006

[edit] Assasin bees

Leonard (or anyone else), can you cite references for your paragraph on "assassin" bees? When they were first released in the Americas, this was the story that went around, but, as I recall, it was later determined to be more myth than fact. Please support this, if it is really true. (Also placed on Leonard's talk page)Pollinator 21:33, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

I had a long discussion with our local international bee expert - a retired engineer and beekeeper, he has traveled to South Africa and Brazil and is well aquainted with both bee lore and bee facts. I have rewritten the paragraph to couch it as lore, rather than fact, and have substatiated the lore with supporting facts - facts provided by to me by this expert. Leonard G. 03:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)


If there is an assasin bee I would vote for wasp or hornets even though they aren't bees (most non bee-keepers don't know much of the difference any way) but the Apis Scutellata are a more aggresive defensive bee than any thing and also want more land to get food just like the conquers of America in the 15 century.

Telioty 20:09 30 October 2006

[edit] Why not show a picture of the bee

1. It looks so nearly identical to the European bees that it takes either a complex series of measurements under a microscope, or a DNA analysis, to determine which is which. In other words, you can't tell the difference in a picture. 2.-An alternative answer -- if I ever get back to an Africanized bee area, Wikipedia WILL have a picture. The last time I was there, I did not have the capacity for closeup photos. Pollinator 18:35, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] scutellata versus adansonii

Could somebody cite which lives in Africa? Is adansonii just the hybrid sub-species of the americas?

My error. The andansonii sub species is listed as one of the sub-saharan species listed here (in German)
Some exerpted bablefish translation:
... today's level of knowledge is to eight distinguish eight bee races south of the Sahara:
Apis mellifera adansonii
Apis mellifera capensis
Apis mellifera litorea
Apis mellifera monticola
Apis mellifera nubica
Apis mellifera scutellata
Apis mellifera unicolor
Apis mellifera jemenitica.
...We wanted to become acquainted with naturally the Scutellata still more exactly, because this bee was the most wide-spread bee in seen in Africa. Indeed is assumed that the A. m. adansonii is possibly identical with the A. m. scutellata, or at least a variety of this race.
If anyone can read German a summary of the article would be useful, as this seems to be zeroed in on the issue.
As far as I have heard, the Tanzanian variety in question is a. m. scutellata. The andansonii reference has been removed for now. Note that several web dictionaries may be inaccurate in their entries. I will try to contact the local club international super expert for more info. Leonard G. 16:40, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I read it in german. It's exactly like you said or translated. Brother Adam didn't know either. He didn't have the tools that we have now in terms of genetically identifying a subspecies. The new gene identification tools may bring some changes. Maybe somebody already knows more than Brother Adam about what the difference is between scutellata and adansonii. User:Shoefly

[edit] Absolutely NO sources

This subject matter is one of hype and rumor and all information here is without a single source. I would recommend a verify flag --Kim Nevelsteen 17:13, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the edit summaries in the page history, I think you'll see that quite a bit of this is definitively sourced. Furthermore, I can tell you from personal knowledge that this page is actively watched and edited by several very experienced and well-informed professional beekeepers and bee researchers. I won't try to defend every single element of the article but to say that there are no sources is an overstatement.
Since you apparently have concerns, let me ask you to be specific. Which elements of this article concern you? Rossami (talk) 19:54, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Bowling for Columbine

I think this article should have more historical detail about the fear of killer bees in America. Also, the article could mention Michael Moore's documentary "Bowling for Columbine," which spends at least 15 minutes talking about killer bee panic. 130.132.198.46 07:13, 21 March 2006 (UTC)nitwitpicker

[edit] Why not erradicate them?

If they are so dangerous why not gas them? I can't imagine it being that hard to create a chemical weapon tailored specifically to kill them. I'm sure we have something like that already. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lengis (talk • contribs).

  1. They are not that dangerous. The media makes money playing to people's fears but choose to ignore that many people successfully live side-by-side with Africanized bees (first in Africa and for decades now in Central America). They are somewhat more aggressive than European honeybees but still less aggressive than your average yellowjacket.
  2. Anything you use to kill them wholesale will also inevitably kill beneficial insects. It is actually incredibly hard to create a chemical weapon that is narrowly targeted. Most chemicals affect entire phyla. It is virtually impossible to develop something targeted to a single species.
    • To make matters much worse, remember that you're not even trying to narrow to a single species - you are talking about a single race. It would be like trying to find something to affect German Shepherds but not Labrador Retrievers.
  3. Any chemical weapon of that sort will also do drastic harm to other animals (including humans). See, for example, the lessons of DDT.
    Rossami (talk) 19:36, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
You have some points, but I should correct you on DDT. DDT has never been known to be toxic to humans. They even conducted a test where a group of people injested a certain amount of the chemical every day for about a year or so. No side effects occured at all.
My example was unclear. My point was that such chemicals have demonstrated significant unintended consequences in other animals (of which, humans may or may not be one). The toxicity of DDT to raptors and fish is well documented. Rossami (talk) 18:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, DDT has caused harmful side effects to birds of prey, and fish. But it's also a fact that DDT saved the lives of millions of people due to the culling of mosquito populations in the countries it was used in, and as a result, cases of malaria went down drastically. If the goal justifies the means, then the negative aspects are negligible.



Also they offer great breeding potential

Telioty 20:05 30 October 2006

[edit] “(AHB)”

I question the value of “(AHB)” in this article. Normally, such a note is used to define an term or abbreviation for future use later in the work. In the case of this article, “AHB” appears exactly and only in that parenthetical note. —Gamahucheur 17:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Abbreviations, like aliases, are also sometimes defined so that readers can recognize them in other contexts. In dedicated beekeeping circles, the use of the abbreviation AHB is very common. (Scan the BEE-L archives, for example.) It also serves as an explanation for why the disambiguation page AHB points to this page. Rossami (talk) 20:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] moved from top of the page

Please Post a photo of this animal! Trying to Identify a nest in the back yard

Africanized honeybees are visually indistinguishable from European honeybees. (There are some differences in the size and shape of the wings but it requires careful and specialized measurements.)
I think you really want to check out Characteristics of common wasps and bees which has pictures of several common members of this family. Rossami (talk) 00:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "hundreds of deaths"

The sentence below has been in this article since Feb 2003. I recently tried to find a citation for this statement and have so far been unable to do so. I've reworded the sentence and removed the reference to "hundreds" pending a citation. Rossami (talk) 05:53, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Over the decades, hundreds of deaths in the Americas have been attributed to them, many resulting from multiple bee stings.

[edit] Assassin Bees

Is the assassin hypothesis accepted by scientists as fact? The article isn't clear. It calls it lore, but then substatiates the claim with facts. Has assassin behavior actually been observed?Mhklein 04:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Simple Bee Control

I have been very successful in eradicating several bee colonies on my property. The first one was a large hive in an enclosed ceiling over my deck. It was about six feet by nine feet by six inches. I came up with a simple idea to get rid of them. I put the nozzle of a shop vac right at the entrance. All the bees came out to defend the nest and were promptly sucked in. All the bees out in the field came in and tried to attack the offending hazard to the nest and were also sucked up. After about two hours there was no further activity. While the nozzle was in place the bees were not interested in anything but the entrance to the hive. No one got stung and no bees came afterwards. There was about five gallons of dead bees in the canister.

I have eradicated several other hives in the same manner. It has worked on hives of all kinds and sizes I have encountered. It has occurred to me that for larger nests, a vactor truck could even be used.

Although I have no reason to believe the bees I used it on were Africanized, I suspect that being even more aggressive, they would be just as likely to attack the offending nozzle as a priority to defend the nest, if not more so.

The method is selective in that it targets only the specific hive and is pretty much eco-friendly. No poisons, no innocent victims. It's also cheap. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FAMiller (talk • contribs) 01:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

Professionals will sometimes use a variation of that technique as a start but tend not to use it as the only means to remove the colony. First, it will only remove the guard bees. The queen, some nurse bees and whatever field bees were out of the nest when you do your vacuuming will still be left and might be able to reestablish the colony. Second, if the colony was inside the walls of a structure (like the siding of a house) and if you are successful at killing off the colony you still have a sticky mess inside the walls. The honey and rotting larvae will attract other pests, some of which are much worse than the bees. The moisture in the walls is also really hard on plaster and drywall.
By the way, I've never heard of a colony of honeybees that could support 5 gallons of bees. A really healthy swarm might be a gallon or so - the full colony no more than double that. If you really had a colony that productive, then it was a shame to have to kill them. Are you sure it was honeybees? Rossami (talk) 06:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
They almost certainly were not honeybees, but were instead probably yellowjacket wasps. In most of the US (especially rural areas) it is normal to call the latter "bees". Dyanega 19:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
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