The increase in human fatalities from honey bee stings following the arrival of these hybrids in Mexico (480 fatalities out of more than 5000 individual cases) caused widespread public fear, leading them to be called “killer” bees 14. Additionally, scutellata-hybrids exhibit higher rates of absconding and lower honey production, behaviors deemed undesirable for apiculture, but that potentially helped scutellata-hybrids rapidly expand their range 13. Heightened defensiveness is hypothesized to be one of the principal factors underlying the widespread success of scutellata-hybrid honey bees following their introduction to the American continents 13. Because of negative, and in some cases, inaccurate connotations we avoid the term “Africanized” and adopt the term “ scutellata-hybrid” first suggested by Calfee et al. scutellata honey bees to Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1956-and their subsequent escape a year later-brought this African subspecies into contact with the previously introduced subspecies (EHB), with which they hybridized 10. We will refer to these commercial hybrids whose genomes are dominated by European lineages as European Honey Bees (EHB). In addition, honey bees from the Western European (M) and Middle Eastern (O) lineages have also been introduced to the New World, and often hybridize with honey bees in both feral and managed populations 6, 9. However, genetic analysis of honey bees used commercially show them to be hybrids whose genomes are made up nearly entirely of a mixture of C and M lineages 8. In the United States, one of the most widely used honey bee strains for both commercial-scale services and backyard beekeeping due to its low defensiveness, reduced proclivity to swarm, and robust honey production is the one sold as the Italian honey bee ( A. scutellata, a widespread African subspecies, and the Syrian honey bee, A. monticola, the Ethiopian highlands honey bee) and others for their propensity to collectively sting and harass in response to a disturbance of their hive (e.g. Certain subspecies are characterized by a low level of defense (e.g. Defensiveness varies greatly within and across clades 4. These subspecies fall into several broader biogeographic clades: Africa (A), Western Europe (M), Eastern Europe (C), Middle East (O), and Arabian Peninsula and Eastern Africa (Y) (reviewed in 3). There are marked differences in nest defense behavior amongst the more than two dozen recognized subspecies of the western honey bee. In honey bees, there is high interest in assessing the relative contributions of these variables to defensive behavior due to the intensive handling of colonies inherent in beekeeping, which runs the gamut from small-scale hobbyist practices to commercial-level apiculture and pollination. The study of such complex colony-level behavior poses special challenges because this behavior is determined by various social, genetic, and environmental factors interacting in ways that are not easily teased apart (reviewed in 2). Multiple social insects possess an impressive capacity for nest defense-mobilizing hundreds to thousands of individuals through a complex cascade of information transfer, physiological response, and behavioral modification 1. Defensiveness in the scutellata-hybrids appears lower than what has been previously documented in Brazil and Mexico, possibly due to their lower proportion of A. Most measures of defensiveness did not increase in managed colonies. Defensiveness increased during the later months of the study in scutellata-hybrid colonies. Standard measures of defensiveness were low in both scutellata-hybrid and European colonies during May. mellifera ligustica) hives at two apiaries in Southern California. scutellata ancestry in colonies and conducted a seasonal assessment (May through November) of colony nest defensiveness in feral scutellata-hybrid and a popular lineage of European honey bee commonly used in managed environments (sold as A. In the most recent zone of scutellata hybridization, the southern USA, the degree to which this defensiveness differs among current strains, and the extent to which defensiveness varies across a season has not been measured. Scutellata-hybrid (“Africanized”) honey bees are usually considered to be far more defensive than European honey bees which are therefore preferred for commercial and hobbyist beekeeping. Nest defense in the honey bee ( Apis mellifera) is a complex collective behavior modulated by various interacting social, environmental, and genetic factors.
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