Western Honey Bee

• GeneralEscaped from an experiment in Brazil in 1957, it spread across the Americas and defends its hive en masse.
• The Africanised bee is not this subspecies in pure form but a hybrid: in 1957, 26 swarms with African queens brought over to cross with European bees escaped from an apiary at Rio Claro, Brazil, and the hybrid descendants spread across the Americas.
• Its venom is no more potent than the European honey bee's. The difference is one of degree: they respond up to ten times faster, far more workers turn out, and they pursue an intruder much further.
• It advanced between 300 and 500 km a year until it reached southern California in 1994.
• It cannot be told from a European honey bee by eye: the morphology overlaps completely.
• A recording of the buzz of a disturbed African swarm puts most elephants to flight, and is used to protect crops and trees from the damage they do.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat & environment

Savannah, tropical forest and farmland

Sources consulted: Kerr (1957); Harpur et al. (2020), Genome Biology and Evolution; IUCN Global Invasive Species Database; King et al.