In the 1950s, the Brazilian government set itself a mission: to stimulate honey production in the stifling and very specific conditions of the Amazon. To solve the equation, the state called on Warwick Estevam Kerr, a renowned geneticist. The researcher then thought he had the idea of the century, knowing that South African bees are exceptional workers, capable of producing astronomical quantities of honey. His goal? Import a few specimens to cross them with local, more docile varieties, and obtain a perfect hybrid.
The scientist was, however, fully aware of the danger. African queens have a heavy genetic baggage dictated by survival: in them, evolution has shaped a fierce aggressiveness to repel all their predators, anteaters and other army ants. Warwick Estevam Kerr therefore took all the necessary precautions in his laboratory in Rio Claro, near São Paulo. The protocol imposed strict isolation grids to prevent queens from escaping while allowing workers to circulate. This was without taking into account a difficult parameter to control: human error.
The drama begins when an assistant beekeeper, thinking he is doing the right thing, removes the famous protective grids which blocked the precious queens: twenty-six of them escape. Once in the wild, these escapees quickly mate with local species. Pandora’s box is open. The resulting hybrid, the Africanized bee – quickly renamed the “killer bee” – has just been born, combining perfect adaptation to the tropical climate and disproportionate defensive reactivity.
Contrary to popular belief, the venom of a killer bee is not more toxic than that of a conventional bee. What makes them formidable is their collective behavior. Where a European bee will dispatch a few individuals to chase away an intruder, the Africanized variety deploys entire swarms, attacking en masse and pursuing its target for hundreds of meters. According to an investigation published by journalist Darren Orf in the online magazine Popular Mechanics, this hereditary aggression has caused the deaths of more than 1,000 people across the continent since the initial escape in 1957.
The domino effect of global warming
Unstoppable, the new swarms progress at a breakneck pace, colonizing between 300 and 500 kilometers each year. After crossing all of Central America, the front reached the southern United States in the early 1990s. The first official death was recorded there in 1993, when a Texan breeder died from an attack. Until now, the progression of these winged invaders knew an intangible natural boundary: originating from the tropics, they do not have the metabolic resources to survive the harsh winters of the north.
However, this thermal barrier is being shattered. With the global rise in temperatures, winters are becoming milder and opening new territories to the insect. Forecast models estimate that within a few decades, swarms of killer bees could settle permanently as far south as the Appalachian mountain range and in southeastern Oregon, disrupting local ecosystems and beekeeping activities in regions that have until now been completely preserved.
Faced with this invisible invasion, the agricultural world is trying to organize itself. Professionals notably deploy the technique of “drone flooding”which consists of massively releasing European drones (the male bee) into the wild to maximize the chances that a queen will mate and thus reinforce its presence. Another method remains the systematic and regular replacement of queens within professional hives in order to ensure that the queen remains purely of European stock and preserves the calm of the colony.
Despite these efforts at biological containment, experts are lucid: the Africanized bee is now an integral part of the landscape. Information and educational efforts will have to be made to teach the public to coexist with this newcomer, by increasing vigilance during nature walks in risk areas.
