Family dog and puts 3 people in the hospital in California. Per Yahoo News.

Dang

African bees?

Hmm good hives to have. The fellow having issues with his neighbor could find a few hives of those useful.

I can't imagine how large of a swarm that would have to bee to have the # to do that kind of damage. Insane. Now California will likely kill bees and make more regulations. Seems to always be their solution. They should pass a law making it illegal for more than 10 bees per colony to sting the same target.

just hope they were feral bees and not in someones hive box, can you imagine the lawsuit

Undoubtedly africanized.

Africanized as none of the around dozen different subspecies of the Western Honey Bee brought to the americas is pure anything.

Africanized are descendants of the African Savanna subspecies Apis mellifera scutelatta. They are the same species as the other races/subspecies (italian/carniolan/british black/caucasian/syrian/macedonian/spanish) brought over and no more dangerous on the individual level. If anything the venom toxicity is slightly lower.

What makes them dangerous is the degree of extreme defensivess and sensitivity to disturbance. While your typical european race of bees might send out a handful of bees to chase off a predator the african one sends out the entire colony.

But this stands to reason for a couple differing causes.

First the european races have been managed in hives by humans for over five millennia and over most of that time honey harvest required killing off the colony. Guess which ones got selected? Yup, the mean ones so a few thousand years of selection for gentleness.

The african on the other hand lives in a hostile environment filled with equally hostile wildlife of all sizes to include both humans and elephants and has managed to fend off both as A.m.scutelatta was not successfully managed in hives until the 20th century. They are the ultimate survivors, which leads to another interesting trait the inability to breed out the extreme defensive nature.

Scutelatta living in a hostile environment has a much stronger work ethic than european bees. They are early risers compared to europeans getting out and getting it done before the europeans are out the door to include the mating flights. So where africanized can exist they tend to out compete and replace the european races.

Can exist is the sole limiting factor though. As a Sub-Saharan race they never developed the necessary behaviors needed for surviving even the mildest of winters. Couple that with the limited gene flow between them and the european races and they cannot survive outside of the warmest parts of the US.

BTW, there are some interesting things going on with scutelatta in the americas.

They somehow have a much higher ability to deal with and survive varroa mite infestation.

They are more productive than the european races in the areas they can thrive in like the tropics. They propelled Brazil to the top tier of honey producing nations.

Controlled breeding efforts (AI) has moderated the defensivess to a degree in managed stocks.

And in a paradoxical case the africanized bees that colonized and took over Puerto Rico have somehow lost the extreme defensivess without human intervention.

Several years ago some bees had took up resistance in a tree 20 feet outside a set of catch pens we had. We use these pens every year to gather cattle so the bees couldn't have there the year before. Anyway there was 75 head of 8 weight heifers. Boss and me got them penned and he immediately left to go get the semi. Shortly after he left I notice the heifers acting crazy and got to looking closer and they were being swarmed by thousands of bees. Had a few find me and seriously chased me for over a hundred yards and the only to stop them was kill them. Called the boss and could tell he wasn't believing me about how bad it was until he got there. I warned him not to get within 30 yds but he didn't listen and before long he was running around swatting bees. Ended up having to turn all the heifers lose and set up portable panels to load them. And they were visually covered with welts. No doubt in my mind if a person had been in the middle of it it would have killed them. Had a guy who had had bees for over 50 years come look at them a week later and he said he wanted nothing to do with them. Waited till winter and went back with skid steer and saw on it and cut tree down and put it in burn pile. Even with tempts in high 20s you wouldn't have had a chance of cutting that tree down without a cab on that skid loader. I'm no bee except but we had a wild hive in a tree growing up and my grandparents had one in the column on their front porch and we would mess with them as kids and I've never seen bees act like these did.

I already thought of that. Wasp pheromone. Not enough wasps around here though for it to work. That card has already been played by my dad, and it worked wonderfully.

I’ve got some hot hives this year. Fifty years keeping bees, I’ve never took this many stings. I planned on requeening them, but my queen supplier didn’t come through. Got summer honey off….that was an experience. Fall flow ends in late September…..taking honey in the Fall is always tougher than summer.

What's a hot hive

Aggressive

Defensivess isn't just an african trait. All stocks can have their bad hair days.

The old "dutch" bee aka british black/french heather/german subspecies was notoriously nasty and the main reason we pretty much switched over to the calmer italians and carniolan races.

I had a neighbor who swore by his dutch bees, I swore at them.

Russian bees (a carniolan based strain) are known for getting hot when outcrossed onto other stock. The same is reported of the Buckfast bees (a multi race composite).

And many still believe a hot hive makes more honey and purposely select for it.

Y’all deal with the bees, I just want honey and don’t care if it’s European or African bees, I ain’t racist.

In the 90’s my pawpaw sold all 500 of his hives because he was worried about the Africa bees becoming an issue in Texas. Good memories of going with him checking hives.

Them killer bees a crazy,,,, One come out and finds you,,,,,,, the rest follow..
Little poops are in the darnedest off places in AZ.
Not predictable at all for location.