Science / Medicine : Interbreeding May Reduce Hostility of African Bees

The Africanized bees that have been working their way northward from South America into the United States may interbreed with existing bee populations to a much greater extent than researchers had previously believed. This would greatly increase the chances that undesirable traits will be bred out of the population, according to a new report published last week in the journal Science.

The Africanized bees are inferior honey producers compared to the European bees used in the United States, are not as good at pollinating agricultural crops, and are more likely to attack animal or human intruders en masse. Scientists had previously believed that the Africanized bees would not readily interbreed with the European bees, said bee geneticist Benjamin P. Oldroyd of the U.S. Department of Agriculture station in Baton Rouge.

But Oldroyd, Thomas P. Rinderer and their colleagues at the agriculture department studied bee populations in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula--which has one of the world’s densest bee populations--and found extensive interbreeding of the two bee species.

They did not study behavioral changes in the Africanized bees as a result of the genetic mingling, but they concluded that the intermingling “will presumably produce bees more desirable for commercial applications . . . and less likely to cause public health problems.”