lorien@dartvax.UUCP (Lorien Y. Pratt) (05/25/84)
Confirming your hypothesis: Yes, I saw a documentary on PBS within the
last month about the killer bees. It was very scientific and not at
all B-movie sensationalistic, as one might expect. It focused on the
impact that killer bees were having on honey farmers.
It seems that it's *much* more difficult to keep hives of killers. The
bees are pretty much like your normal honey bees. They can interbreed
and I believe the mechanism for their "takeover" of normal bees' nests
is through a dominant gene for "agressiveness". They are much more
easily aroused and much more likely to sting, in contrast to normal
bees which can be made quite docile by smoking out their nest.
There was some interesting footage with the narrator of the documentary
in a bee keepers' suit being covered with these beasties. The man he
was interviewing said that he would probably be dead from bee sting
were it not for the protective clothing.
Honey costs will, no doubt, rise considerably unless somone can develop
a strain of bee that will compete with the killers yet not be as easily
aroused or find some way to block the new strains' migration
northward.
--Lorien Y. Pratt
Dartmouth College Library
Hanover, NH 03755
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