Science Swarms to the Rescue

The Africanized killer bees in Lost Hills caused quite an uproar among state agriculture officials. The state was ready to spray pesticides on the bees or destroy all beehives, commercial and wild, in the area. But bee experts calmed them with their surprising report that this swarm of killer bees is harmless in the long run and will crossbreed with domestic bees into docility. Californians may feel sorry for the fox and the rabbit that the bees stung to death, but we were lucky to get exposed to this imported small swarm of Africanized bees before the huge overland migration arrives around 1990.

Killer bees endanger a human population only when there are enough of them to genetically “Africanize” the domestic bees of lands that they invade. Killer bees pollinate crops and flowers to a much lesser extent than normal bees do, and they produce much less honey. In California $2 billion worth of crops depend on domestic bee pollination, so a bee population that pollinated less would be disastrous.

Genetic dominance by killer bees also would create a more aggressive bee population, but, once again, we don’t have to worry about the swarm in Lost Hills because it is outnumbered by less-aggressive domestic strains of bees.

The country’s first reported killer bees have turned out to be less killers than instructors. Agriculturists, beekeepers and scientists are learning more about the bees as they hunt them, and this information will aid future battles against greater swarms of the insects. And, since the bees supposedly hitched a ride on oil-drilling equipment imported from Latin America, inspections of such equipment should be more thorough in the future. One swarm of killer bees is enough for now.