Organic HONEY BEES
...doing the science.
Honey bee genesis is traced to southeast Africa. In their time, what we call Africa was a tectonic piece of the singular continent of Pangaea, which itself was a moment of Earth geology as it drifted into the map we know in this moment. What mattered then was the primal symbiosis of blossoms and pollinators; the more of each, the more of both. The rise and fall of dinosaurs was tens of millions of years to come. Even farther away were the primates that reign as arbiters of extinction in the extant epoch.
In 1956 on the scale of Anno Domini fewer than 100 queens of an old honey bee subspecies were taken from the environs of the Kalahari Desert to Brazil for research. Some 26 of them escaped a year later. They fell in with the locals, let the politics calm down, and then moved out. As of 2011 their descendants are at 32 degrees south latitude east of the Andes and north at Los Angeles and southern Utah, and lately in Georgia.
Rebel Queens
They have something to tell us, and we should listen to them...
Our western honey bees in the US have long been tamed by selection, which has weakened them. In contrast, the progenitor African queens bring with them the genes that originally defined the species; strong genes from eons past.
From Brazil into the US, honey bee queens know what they need and want for their colonies, and research shows that they preferentially mate with African scions bearing the original genes. In doing so they gain strength, and in doing so they lose docility.
Introgression is the biology term for this enthusiastic honey bee reunion. But the offspring are outlaws in the US, and feral on their leading edge, and killed when caught.
Paradigm Time
It is not simply pests that are being destroyed, rather genes, honey bee genes. They are not all bad. Some are quite good. And we should understand what we do. Antique journals predating by decades the Brazil event record that the mix of African and European genes can be a challenge for beekeepers, yet this is what has arrived in the southern US after an historic migration.
Honey bees of every kind will sting to defend what is theirs, but some African honey bees appear aggressive to us and unfamiliar because their defense is easily triggered and they recruit greater numbers. Useful no doubt as a tool to survive a million years or so of plundering tribesmen and honey badgers in the tough neighborhood of the Kalahari, overdone stinging is a trait that experienced beekeepers can deselect, given the time, space and motivation.
Within their US territory the African honey bees are an invasive subspecies, and a few - yes, these are the so-called killer honey bees - have incited bad media for all. They are also survivors, resisting many of our honey bee plagues. In their African homeland, they hold world records for honey production. In Brazil, African genes make up the pollinators and honey producers of choice in that country - precisely what the initial research hoped for.
Exit interviews reveal that beekeepers in the US are disinclined to work with mixed genetics because they are fearful - not of the protective African honey bee - of the predatory American lawsuit.
Territorial Imperatives On Display
Extinction by decree of African honey bees has a 55 year history of expensive failure in the western hemisphere. It is also tragic in that the honey bees we think of as ours - already in serious decline- are exceedingly difficult to distinguish from the condemned.
The African honey bees are still moving north, staking their claims. NASA is mapping suitable habitat ahead of them and traps are confirming their arrival. Click the link.
This part of the website will include more on African honey bees. That is, until apis cerana - the Asian honey bee - a different species from our apis millifera - not merely a subspecies - makes her way from Asia or Australia past internationally acclaimed lame US security and changes everything...