Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Oh The Horror African Bee Apis mellifera scutellata

Look at the sweet little honey bees......

Aren't they sweet? So friendly....and they make us honey!

They're not evil......who said they were evil?.....they make us honey!

They're not evil at all........nope not at......

WRONG!

The bees pictured above are indeed 100% evil. Why? They are African bees. These are the bees that are responsible for creating the nightmare known as the "killer bees".

If not creating it then being apart of it.

But they're nasty little bastards too. Have a looksie:

These bees are much more aggressive compared to the European subspecies. Small swarms of AHBs are capable of taking over European honey beehives by invading the hive and establishing their own queen after killing the European queen.

See? And then there's similar crimes committed by the Cape Honey Bee:

The African bee is being threatened by the introduction of the Cape honey bee into northern South Africa. If a female worker from a Cape honey bee colony enters an African bee nest, they are not attacked, partly due to their resemblance to the African bee queen. Now independent from her own colony, she may begin laying eggs, and since A.m. capensis workers are capable of parthenogenetic reproduction, they will hatch as "clones" of herself, which will also lay eggs.

As a result the parasitic A. m. capensis workers increase in number within a host colony. This leads to the death of the host colony on which they depend.

An important factor causing the death of a colony seems to be the dwindling numbers of A. m. scutellata workers that perform foraging duties (A. m. capensis workers are greatly under-represented in the foraging force of an infected colony) owing to death of the queen, and, before queen death, competition for egg laying between A. m. capensis workers and the queen. When the colony dies, the capensis females will seek out a new host colony.

Evil satanic bastards these things are no?

And you thought that all honey bees were good....>:)

Info from Wikipedia. Although I got a little mixed up on this one. Forgive me.

Until next time!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So you call them evil... I call you soft :o) What you forget is for us here in Africa, they are called our common honey bee. These little guys are very productive in producing honey and like most otherthings in Africa they are tough! If they have honey, they will defend it by sending out up to 5 times more workers to defend it if under threat compared to the European honey bee... Bar that they are actually not that much more aggressive. The sting carries the same amount and strength of poison as the European honey bee. We treat them the same way you treat a European honey bee but unlike in Europe we don't go prancing about with just a net over our head... We wear the whole kit - net, overall, boots & gloves!