Honey Bee Safety and Africanization

The Southern Arizona Beekeeping Association is dedicated to maximizing public safety through education and community engagement with regard to wild honey bee colonies. Tragically each year in the United States and beyond, several people are killed due to unintentional disturbance of honey bee colonies. We are both saddened and very concerned when this occurs. A large number of these attacks are preventable, and there are various strategies that you can employ to reduce the likelihood of injury. Developing an ongoing plan of action to reduce potential hazards requires broad and proactive community outreach with accurate information.

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We respectfully request that the general public, including media, law enforcement, and local leadership first considers this source of information before issuing public statements about this unique challenge.  

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Individuals should not attempt to move or exterminate honey bees themselves. Call someone experienced in the removal and relocation of honey bees – they need to be dealt with in very specific ways to ensure safety.  For the Tucson area we maintain a list of experienced beekeepers who remove and relocate honey bee colonies.

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Swarm and Bee Removal list for the Tucson area

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Understand that beekeepers do charge for the service of removing honey bee colonies from structures and for swarm removal.  This is a complex and dangerous operation that takes considerable time and travel expense.  It requires extensive knowledge of bees and beekeeping and also requires specific tools and equipment. The bees a beekeeper removes from a structure often have little to no financial value to the beekeeper.  

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A person’s chance of running into wild honey bee colonies in the desert southwest is higher than other parts of the country.  However, the chances of dying from honey bee stings in your lifetime is several times less than getting struck by lightning, The Africanized hybrid strain thrives best in our particular climate with low rainfall, and mild winter temperatures. Even more so around urban areas where people have provided water, numerous man-made cavities, and flowers that are not indigenous to the Sonoran Desert.

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Unfortunately following each accident, insufficient or inaccurate information hastily bubbles forth through standard media channels. While we feel that this is largely unintentional, we also understand that – save for some highly experienced beekeepers, pest control operators specializing in honey bees, and honey bee researchers – the general public, media, law enforcement, and local leadership does not have the expertise needed to accurately determine the causes of these attacks or to prevent them in the future. Information disseminated by these sources should be taken with a fair amount of caution.

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Despite extermination, swarm trapping, and live relocation by pest control companies and experienced beekeepers, the population of wild Africanized colonies can be expected to increase in warmer regions of the United States. By “wild” we mean to say: colonies not managed by beekeepers in beekeeping equipment with moveable combs or frames.

 

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It is important to note the use of the term “swarm” by the general media. Typically, when an attack occurs, it is usually said that the victim was “swarmed”, or that the victim was attacked by a “swarm that was passing through”. Occasionally we are given the impression that a group of honey bees “appears out of nowhere” to attack a victim. In almost all cases these claims are false because true honey bee swarms do not viciously attack. Instead, established hives easily found by most beekeepers are at fault. These hives have usually been established for more than a few months since it takes a while for a swarm to establish itself as a hive and defend its home more forcefully.

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A swarm is almost always completely docile regardless of whether they are of European or Africanized origin. A swarm is a group of honey bees without a home, brood, or honey combs to protect, and they are looking for a more permanent home. In terms of massive stinging incidents, a swarm of honey bees is of very low public risk compared to an older established colonies of honey bees that are usually found in some sort of cavity like a block wall or under shed floor.

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Regardless, we repeat, you should not attempt to move or exterminate honey bees yourself. Call someone experienced in dealing with honey bees – they need to be dealt with in very specific ways to ensure safety.

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Clarifying some facts about Africanized Honey Bees

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• Africanized honey bees (AHB) are not a pure strain from the African continent. They are a hybrid or genetic mix between docile European strains and the original African strain. Overtime they can have a disproportionate number of African traits since they can out-compete European strains if left unchecked.

• The temperament of Africanized honey bees can vary from being completely docile to extremely aggressive, including a good proportion having a temperament somewhere in between. It is more unusual for European strains of honey bees to exhibit highly aggressive behavior, but not unheard of.

• The venom of both European and Africanized honey bee strains are identical. However, more aggressive strains of honey bees recruit more of the colony to attack as a chemical pheromone marker is emitted during the act of stinging. The most active ingredients in honey bee venom are mellitin, histamine, and other proteins.

• The only way to determine with certainty that a particular colony is Africanized is through genetic testing or morphometric analysis of the wings under laboratory protocols which are typically unavailable to the general public at this time.

• The level of aggression that a hive might exhibit is more extreme the larger the hive population due to a higher percentage of older bees experienced in guarding the hive.

• Africanized honey bees outcompete European honey bees in many ways:

  • Higher swarming rates meaning they reproduce more often

  • Higher swarming rates can also be related to their tolerance for smaller cavities in which they establish their hives. Hives bound by smaller cavities swarm sooner and more often.

  • They are better at foraging for food than European strains.

  • They are better at tolerating pests like Varroa mites leading to higher survivability rates.

  • They produce more baby bees (brood) earlier in the year and more quickly.

  • Africanized virgin queens pupate and emerge from their cocoons (cells) faster than those with more European ancestry. The first queen to emerge kills the rest before they emerge.

  • They are more active at guarding and patrolling the surrounding area around their hives

 

The term “Africanized” is used to describe a hybrid (or a genetic mixture) of the original African strain (Apis Mellifera scutellata) and strains brought by the Portuguese and Spanish in the 15th through 19th centuries (Apis Mellifera iberica, and ligustica) which were used up until the mid-1950’s in Brazil for honey and beeswax production. Today European strains continue to hybridized with Africanized honey bees – primarily the Italian honey bee (Apis Mellifera ligustica) which was brought into the US around the mid-nineteenth century to replace the German Black Bee (Apis Mellifera mellifera) originally brought by Western European colonialists in the early to mid-17th century.

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While Africanized strains do have a mating advantage over European counterparts, that’s not to say that diluting aggressive drones in mating areas is not possible. Those of us involved in relocating honey bees routinely notice higher instances of aggression in wild colonies the further they are from higher densities of beekeepers. Beekeepers are the ones actively propagating gentle drones without the alleles responsible for aggression. For this reason it’s essential that properly trained beekeepers continue to participate in keeping gentle colonies of honey bees.