Are Killer Bees Real? New Information Questions Authenticity

Killer bees have become one of the recent myths of American culture. Most Americans have heard of them, but, if asked, no one has really seen one. Undeterred, however, Americans have established outdoor festivals in their honor in Texas, and have named sports teams for them.

According to legend, the killer bee originated in the Amazon forest, through the mating of an African bee with a honeybee. The offspring created was reputed to be a deadly hybrid, one which should not be provoked, since mythic tales stated that swarms of killer bees would viciously attack any creature that unknowingly crossed their path. If escape from them was possible, by the action of jumping into a nearby body of water, it was rumored that these bees would simply wait for the individual to re-emerge and would then continue their attack, without regard for the length of time the wait involved.

Drawing upon primal fears, the legend of the killer bee prompted a mostly urban society to collectively look over its shoulder for a tiny winged boogeyman. Like other tall tales and legends, the tale played upon the ignorance of the audience, an urban group lacking firsthand knowledge of the natural world. It also re-enforced other concepts which had bee absorbed by the society visually, through cartoons and science fiction horror films. The tale's impact was based on this society's emotional response, rather than its logic.

It is a fact that African bees belong to a larger group of bees whose native habitat is the tropics. They are much more aggressive that the European honeybee, due to intense competition for available resources and due to the fact that they are exposed to a tremendous number of natural predadors. To protect their continued existence, African bees are known to reproduce more frequently, to replace individuals lost through predation, and in greater numbers than their European counterparts.

It has been noted, in other tropical bees, that bees described as difficult and irritable, in their native environments, were viewed as docile when food sources increased and predators decreased. Since the first African bee was supposed to have escaped in South America, a land lacking natural African bee predators, this bee would have only required a reliable food source in order to calm down.

There were other problems in the Amazon forest, though, that had nothing to do with the African bee. The forest itself was beginning to disappear. As activists, natives of the Amazon ecosystem, began to publicly draw the world's attention to the deforestation of the Amazon basin, and its negative impact on the global environment, the most vocal activists, including clergy, were permanently silenced by assassination. The powerful, in this region of emerging economic growth on the world stage, meant to expand their grasp of all monetary resources and eliminated any threats to personal or corporate expansion. Suddenly, the tales of killer bees began to replace news conferences detailing the extent and effects of deforestation on Amazon residents and the world.

These tales also permeated Spanish-speaking societies to the north, societies in which assassination for speaking out was not unknown. Eventually, the saga of the killer bee was repeated in a country long-known for its domestication of native stingless bees. The inhabitants of this place also had a established tradition of creating and using tall tales. Just as tales of Pecos Bill had once been told to deter this group from immigrating into newly-inhabited United States territory, illegal immigrants from this land brought the saga of the killer bee with them across the Rio Grande into the United States, to intimidate anyone who might be susceptible to the tale.

In San Francisco, a local news team noticed that killer bees, which had been anticipated, had never arrived in the Bay area. Retracing supposed sightings of killer bees, the team reported that, although killer bees seemed to be located along the U.S.-Mexico border from Texas to California, and northward to Los Angeles, there was no real threat from the bees in San Francisco.

Throughout all of this, no one, not even the reporters, had mentioned the fact that African bees have been traditionally preyed upon by both humans and chimpanzees. In South Africa, for example, there is no real beekeeping tradition, due to the fact that the accepted practice, for generations, has been to gather honey directly from wild bees. Even chimpanzees use a stick to sample delectable wild honey. Both harvestings occur without a tradition of fatalities.

Fatalities, however, are an everyday occurrence in the illegal animal bloodsports imported with illegal immigrants into the United States. With a love of wagering on and viewing cockfights and bullfights, both of which result in the deaths of the animal participants, as this influence grew, other animals, such as dogs, were pitted against each other in back alleys in the United States, in deadly underground competitions. As ravaged animals were disposed of, tales of killer bees killing dogs began to emerge.

In the Amazon, the hybrid supposedly created between the nore aggressive wild African bee and the domestic honeybee also did not reflect time-honored methods of beekeeping in places such as South America. Although honeybees were imported relatively quickly into the New World by arriving Europeans, New World natives had long relied upon indigent stingless bees for both honey and cultivation. When vanilla plants were exported by colonists to Europe, home of the honeybee, they could not pollinate the plants, due to the absence of the required stingless bees.

Genetic studies have also shown that hybrids, of any kind, produce variables. If an African bee was mated with a European honeybee, the offspring that were created should have included some individuals with traits similar to the African bee and other individuals with traits similar to the European honeybee. Further mating, since there are no native populations of African bees in the New World, should have further diluted the genetic pool of these bees to include more traits similar to the honeybee.

Since killer bees are one of the recent myths of American culture, a new tale needs to begin. Currently, native populations of wild bees in the United States, including honeybees, are actively hunted and exterminated as killer bees. It is a negative action that does not reflect the facts or protect the future. Due to the fact that bees are required for pollination, we really benefit from these non-killers.