* The Africanized bee is accidentally released in Brazil.

An Africanized bee extracts nectar from a flower as pollen grains stick to its body in Tanzania

Africanized honey bees, known colloquially as " killer bees ," are some hybrid varieties of the Western honey bee species, ( Apis mellifera ), produced originally by cross-breeding of the African honey bee A. m. scutellata, with various European honey bees such as the Italian bee A. m. ligustica and the Iberian bee A. m. iberiensis.

Small swarms of Africanized bees are capable of taking over European honey bee hives by invading the hive and establishing their own queen after killing the European queen.

An Africanized bee extracts nectar from a flower as pollen grains stick to its body in Tanzania

Several researchers and beekeepers describe a general trait of the African subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata, classified by Lepeletier, 1836-( African honey bee ) Central and West Africa, which is absconding, where the Africanized honeybee colonies abscond the hive in times when food-stores are low, unlike the European colonies which tend to die in the hive.

The Africanized honey bee varieties produced a reversion of behaviour similar to non-domesticated species.

The sting of the Africanized Honey Bee is no more potent than another variety of honey bee, and they have a similar appearance.

* Africanized bee, a hybrid of the African honey bee with various European honey bees

# REDIRECT Africanized bee

# REDIRECT Africanized bee

For example, feral honey bee populations in the US have dropped about 90 % in the past 50 years, except for the Southwest where they have been replaced by Africanized bees.

The Buckfast bee of today also contains heritage from two African rare and docile African stocks A. m. sahariensis and the A. m. monticola, but not the " Africanized " A. m.

A likely cause of " hot " hives in subsequent generations is the introduction of Africanized bee genetics being introduced either to the mother queen or to the daughter queen via local Africanized drones.

# REDIRECT Africanized bee

The decline of the species is attributed to hunting and trapping of the birds, destruction of its habitat, and the introduction of the Africanized bee, which competes for nesting sites and kills breeding individuals at their nests.

The Africanized bee in the western hemisphere is directly descended from 26 Tanzanian queen bees ( A. m. scutellata ) accidentally released by a replacement bee-keeper in 1957 near Uberlândia, Minas Gerais State in the southeast of Brazil from hives operated by Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa.

* Africanized bee-a hybrid bee with characteristics unsuitable for beekeeping

These bees are endangered due to massive deforestation, altered agricultural practices ( especially insecticides ), and changing beekeeping practices with the arrival of the Africanized honey bee, which produces much greater honey crops.

Molecular diagnostics using the mitochondrial DNA ( mtDNA ) cytochrome b gene can differentiate A. m. scutellata from other A. mellifera lineages, though mtDNA only allows one to detect an Africanized colony that has an Africanized queen, and not colonies where a European queen has mated with Africanized drones.

Africanized bees have slightly shorter wings, which can be reliably recognized only by performing a statistical analysis on micro-measurements of a substantial sample.

: Africanization can also refer to Africanized " killer " bees.

Colonial dance styles like the highland fling and the quadrille remain popular in Africanized form.

Colonies of honey bees often escape into the wild from managed apiaries when they swarm ; their behavior, however, is no different from their behavior " in captivity ", until and unless they breed with other feral honey bees of a different genetic stock, which may lead them to become more docile or more aggressive ( see Africanized bees ).

What makes Africanized honey bees more dangerous is that they are more easily provoked, quick to swarm, attack in greater numbers, and pursue their victims for greater distances.

Moe is often engaged in shady or illegal activities at his tavern, including smuggling pandas and orcas, imprisoning Hans Moleman under the floor of the bar, hosting Russian roulette games, operating an unlicensed casino, serving liquor without a license ( the liquor license he had was from 1973, signed by Moe himself, and only valid in Rhode Island ), running a speakeasy during Springfield's brief flirtation with prohibition, performing unlicensed surgery, and housing Africanized bees.

The Africanized honey bees in the Western Hemisphere are of mixed descent from 26 Tanganyikan queen bees of A. m. scutellata, accidentally released by a replacement bee-keeper in 1957 near Rio Claro, São Paulo, in the southeast of Brazil, from hives operated by biologist Warwick E. Kerr, who had interbred honey bees from Europe and southern Africa.

Map showing the spread of Africanized honey bees in the United States from 1990 to 2003

As of 2002, the Africanized honeybees had spread from Brazil south to northern Argentina and north to Central America, Trinidad ( West Indies ), Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, and southern California.

The lexicon covers various African languages, as well as words from many other sources " so Africanized that they do not appear foreign ", although no specific etymologies are indicated by the author.

Brown moved on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly " Africanized " approach to music making.

Africanized bees ( known colloquially as " killer bees ") are hybrids between European stock and one of the African subspecies A. m. scutellata ; they are often more aggressive than and do not create as much of a surplus as European bees, but are more resistant to disease and are better foragers.

Novel hybrid strains of domestic and re-domesticated Africanized bees combine high resilience to tropical conditions and good yields.

However, discoveries of the Africanized bees in southern Louisiana indicate this subspecies has penetrated this barrier, In October 2010, a 73-year-old man was killed by a swarm of Africanized honey bees while clearing brush on his south Georgia property, as determined by Georgia's Department of Agriculture.

As the Africanized honeybee migrates further north, colonies are interbreeding with European honeybees.

Thus Africanized bees are expected to be a hazard mostly in the Southern States of the United States, reaching as far north as the Chesapeake Bay in the east.

* Cassiopeia, Queen of the bee colony living in the tree across from Lindesfarne and Fenton in Kevin and Kell comic strip by Bill Holbrook.

* Colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon involving the abrupt disappearance of the worker bees in a beehive or Western honey bee colony

Honeycomb of the giant honey bee Apis dorsata in a colony aggregation in Srirangapatnna near Bangalore

As in a few other types of eusocial bees, a colony generally contains one queen bee, a fertile female ; seasonally up to a few thousand drone bees or fertile males ; and a large seasonally variable population of sterile female worker bees.

Insecticides can kill bees and may be a cause of pollinator decline, the loss of bees that pollinate plants, and colony collapse disorder ( CCD ), in which worker bees from a beehive or Western honey bee colony abruptly disappear.

In 2012 it was reported by state officials that a colony was found for the first time in a bee keepers colony in Monroe County, eastern Tennessee.

Biblia natura published posthumously in 1737, carried the first confirmation that the queen bee is the sole mother of the colony.

The eggs that hatch develop into female workers, and in time the queen populates the colony, with workers feeding the young and performing other duties similar to honey bee workers.

Gathering honey from wild bee colonies is usually done by subduing the bees with smoke and breaking open the tree or rocks where the colony is located, often resulting in the physical destruction of the nest location.

But in settled societies the destruction of the bee colony meant the loss of a valuable resource ; this drawback made beekeeping both inefficient and something of a " stop and start " activity.

There could be no continuity of production and no possibility of selective breeding, since each bee colony was destroyed at harvest time, along with its precious queen.

The British study, “ Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production ,” examines the impacts of the pesticide imidacloprid on bumble bee colony health.

Where colony collapse disorder reduced invasive honey bee populations in the US, native pollinators sometimes have made recoveries, restored to their natural niche by the loss.

Research that was published in November 2004, by scientists under the leadership of Dr. Zachary Huang, Michigan State University indicates that so called primer pheromones play an important part in how a honey bee colony adjusts its distribution of labor most beneficially.

In order to survive as a bee colony of sometimes 50, 000-100, 000 individual bees, the communal structure has to be adaptable to seasonal changes and the availability of food.

While the division of labor in a bee colony is quite complex, the work can be roughly seen as work inside the hive and outside the hive.

It appears that this control system is an example of decentralized decision making in the bee colony.

Unlike a bumble bee colony or a paper wasp colony, the life of a honey bee colony is perennial.