Africanized bees come from South Africa... fun facts...

Continuing on with my invasive species quest, I went to insects. There are myriad invasive bugs, but this one particularly caught my eye because of it's origin.

Have a good one,

C

Fun fact for today: "killer bees" come from South Africa

The Africanized honey bees in the Western Hemisphere are descended from hives operated by biologist Warwick E. Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa. Kerr was attempting to breed a strain of bees that would produce more honey in tropical conditions than the European strain of honey bee then in use throughout North, Central and South America. The hives containing this particular African subspecies were housed at an apiary near Rio Claro, São Paulo, in the southeast of Brazil, and were noted to be especially defensive. These hives had been fitted with special excluder screens (called queen excluders) to prevent the larger queen bees and drones from getting out and mating with the local population of European bees. According to Kerr, in October 1957 a visiting beekeeper, noticing that the queen excluders were interfering with the worker bees' movement, removed them, resulting in the accidental release of 26 Tanganyikan swarms of A. m. scutellata. Following this accidental release, the Africanized honey bee swarms spread out and crossbred with local European honey bee colonies.

Africanized honey bees are typically much more defensive, react to disturbances faster, and chase people further (400 metres (1,300 ft)) than other varieties of honey bees. They have killed some 1,000 humans, with victims receiving 10 times more stings than from European honey bees. They have also killed horses and other animals.