MonsterQuest: Giant Killer Bees!

Killer Bee, OH NO RUN!!!!It's not just killer bees, by the way - it's GIANT killer bees!  Oh man, I love this show.  We open with a description of Africanized honeybees as "mutant beasts" which are the result of "a science experiment gone wrong."

As we all know, Africanized honeybees are an aggressive hybrid bee, which resulted from a cross between African honeybees and their mild-mannered counterpart, the European honeybee.  Neither bee is native to North America.  (Many people are surprised to learn that there are no native North American honeybees - only European honeybees which have gone feral.  We do have other native bees, including bumblebees and orchard mason bees, but no native honeybees.)  

The Africanized honeybee, accidentally released from a bee research station in South America, has been gradually moving north.  Since its release it has been slowly taking over the ecological niche formerly occupied by feral European honeybees.  This is problematic because Africanized honeybees are more aggressive in defense of their nests.

Now to illustrate this, a bunch of guys in bee suits find a colony of Africanized honeybees in an abandoned house. They start pounding on the drywall adjacent to the bees' nest, and the bees pour forth, surprising exactly no one.  

The bee expert breathlessly proclaims that "this wouldn't have happened ten years ago [with European honeybees]" but I am not so sure that's the case.  I can't think of any wild animal that won't rush out to defend its home if you start pounding on the walls like that.  Is this really "aggressive behavior"?  Because it seems pretty natural to me.

Famously, Africanized honeybee victims are stung thousands of times, with enough venom to start shutting down internal organs.  Attacking bees release a pheromone which encourages other swarm members to attack the intended target, and which causes their attacks to persist.

Cut to a bee scientist who says "it's really not such a big deal"  Pfft!  Where's the drama in that?  

I do have to give the show credit for performing possibly some of the best science I've seen in a MonsterQuest episode so far.  In order to contradict assertions that the Africanized honeybee can't travel very far north, the MonsterQuest Bee Expert Team travels to Flagstaff, AZ.  There they gather samples of what seem to be Africanized honeybees, living at a high altitude in a city which frequently sees snow in winter.

These bees are then sent away to a bee identification lab, which positively identifies them as being Africanized honeybees.  Which hardly means that OMG We're All Gonna Die, but is still interesting data nevertheless.  And considerably more than most MonsterQuest episodes, which tend to rest largely on wild speculation by random "experts" and eyewitnesses.

This is the kind of thing that would have scared me stinger-less when I was 8 or 9 years old.  With the benefit of all my years, I am more inclined to find it interesting from an invasive species perspective.  But the lurid eyewitness accounts of killer bee attacks are certainly enough to give any viewer pause for thought!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user insect safari