Villa of the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit in Baton Rouge, La., told Agricultural Research magazine. "Rainfall over 55 inches, distributed evenly throughout the year, is almost a complete barrier to spread," entomologist José D. They cannot survive a cold winter, and they seem to dislike steady, year-long rainfall. Researchers have noticed that Africanized honeybees seem to be isolated in their current range by temperature and rainfall, according to the USDA. A woman and her daughter who tried to help were also hospitalized with dozens of stings, reported firefighters who responded to a 911 call were also attacked. Goodwin, who was reportedly stung more than 1,000 times, was pronounced dead at the scene. Stings from Africanized honeybees aren't more venomous than stings from native honeybees, but victims tend to be stung dozens or hundreds of times. And do not jump into water (such as a swimming pool) to escape the bees - they will wait at the surface for their victim to come up for air, according to Texas A&M University. Protect your face and head as much as possible from stings by covering your head with a shirt or jacket. In the event of a bee attack, victims are advised to run as fast as they can toward an enclosed area like a car or building even though some bees will follow, most will be shut out. Old tires, junk piles, building eaves, cement blocks, upturned flower pots and even empty soda cans have been occupied by the bees, according to the U.S. Though the bees aren't predatory, they become very aggressive when defending their hive, and minor disturbances like a lawn mower or a moving car - even as far away as 100 feet (30 meters) - can trigger an attack.Īnd Africanized honeybees aren't picky about where they build a hive. Hives have been reported in the United States in Florida and across the South and Southwest into Southern California. The bees spread rapidly from Brazil and are now found throughout South and Central America. ![]() His intention was to selectively introduce traits such as disease resistance and faster reproductive rate into native honeybees.īut a handful of the African bees escaped into the wild, where they interbred with native bees to produce bees with traits primarily derived from their dominant African forbearers (traits of the more docile native bees tended to be recessive and therefore lost), leading to the term "Africanized honey bees." ![]() In 1956, Warwick Kerr, a honeybee geneticist with the University of São Paulo, Brazil, imported African bees ( Apis mellifera scutellata) to study. The introduction of Africanized honeybees into the Western Hemisphere was the result of a scientific experiment gone awry, according to a Texas A&M University report.
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