Bee Aware! African Honeybees Becoming Established In Florida

June 20, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — African honeybees – also known as killer bees – have entered Florida, and a University of Florida researcher says the aggressive insects may eventually spread throughout the state and move into other areas of the southeastern United States.

The bees, which tend to sting in large numbers, have been found and stopped at various Florida ports over the past decade, but now it looks like they’re here to stay, said Glenn Hall, an associate professor of entomology at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. He said Florida’s warm climate is ideal for the bees, which could be bad news for the state’s $16 million honeybee industry.

“If African honeybees become established in large numbers over the next few years, they will affect the beekeeping industry and the pollination of many crops,” Hall said. “Public safety, recreation and tourism may also be affected, leading to liability problems.”

Hall, a bee geneticist who developed DNA markers to identify African honeybees, said that — to the untrained eye — they look the same as resident European honeybees.

African bees more aggressively defend their nests than European bees. African bees may swarm as many as 16 times a year while European bees swarm about three times a year, he said.

The African bees invaded five southwestern states in the 1990s and have periodically turned up at Florida’s deep-sea ports since 1987, Hall said. Until recently, swarms entering through ports such as Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa have been successfully captured in bait hives maintained by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

“However, new finds in the Tampa area suggest that African bees are spreading and becoming established in the state, and they are being found farther inland from the ports,” Hall said. “We did not believe that enough bees could arrive on ships to form an established population, but they did so in Puerto Rico, and now appear to be doing the same in Florida.”

He said the infestation around Tampa is still small, and the bees are not unusually aggressive. As isolated swarms enter one by one through the ports, daughter African queens from the swarms have no choice but to mate with the resident European male drones. Fortunately, the hybrid offspring are not as aggressive as their African parents.

“Once the combination of hybrids and new introductions reaches a critical mass, bees of African descent will likely start to mate with each other, resulting in offspring with more African-like characteristics,” Hall said.

He said that the arrival of African bees is not unexpected and should not be viewed with undue alarm at this time.

“Concerns about the bees have been exaggerated, with some media and motion pictures portraying swarms of deadly, stinging insects invading cities,” Hall said. “Nevertheless, it’s important to be aware. African bees have attacked and killed people and livestock in Africa, in South and Central America, and in other states.”

There have been 14 fatalities in the United States, and hundreds of nonfatal stinging incidents have been reported.

Neither the European nor African race of honeybee is native to the Americas, Hall said. The European honeybee (Apis mellifera) has been managed by commercial and hobby beekeepers worldwide for many centuries, selected for desirable traits such as gentleness, honey production, tendency not to swarm, winter hardiness and disease resistance.

On the other hand, the African honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata) is adapted for survival in Africa’s harsh environment where climate, predation and other factors have produced a hardy race, Hall said.

In the 1950s, Brazilian scientists thought that the bees from tropical regions in Africa might thrive in South America’s tropical environment better than the previously imported European honeybees.

“They were right,” Hall said. “Once the African honeybees were released in Brazil, they quickly spread throughout South and Central America, advancing up to 300 kilometers a year through the tropics into Mexico. It was only a matter of time until the African honeybee population reached the United States.”

Movements of African honeybees have been tracked more closely than any other invasive insect. First detected in the southernmost counties of Texas in 1990, they quickly spread to New Mexico, Arizona and California by 1993. Since then, they have moved into southern Nevada and Utah.

Many of the wild (feral) colonies of honeybees in these states are of African descent, making it difficult for beekeepers to manage European honeybees and keep out African honeybee genes. In areas colonized by African bees, regular beekeeping operations with European honeybees are disrupted, and costs of management are increased.

Because of urbanization in Florida and public fears over African bees, coupled with increasing liability, apiary sites could be more difficult to obtain in the future, Hall said. These concerns – along with the marginal income from beekeeping – could discourage beekeepers in the future. That would decrease the availability of bees and increase the price of renting bee colonies that are essential for the pollination of crops.

“Large populations of European honeybees managed by beekeepers are probably our best defense against African bees,” Hall said. “The European honeybees compete with African bees for food sources. When they interbreed with the African bees, defensive stinging behavior in their offspring is reduced.”