The Africanized Honeybee in the United States 



What 



Does 



It 



Mean 



for 



Honeybees 



in 



New 



Hampshire? 



David Sorenson 



Africanized honey bees 

 have expanded their range 

 northward and southward 

 since 1957. the rate at which 

 they spread is influenced 

 by many factors 

 including weather. 



French Guiana 



THE general public has a special 

 fear of stinging insects and a num- 

 ber of sensational news stories and 

 motion pictures about the African- 

 ized Honeybee (AHB), also known as 

 the Brazilian bee and the "killer 

 bee," have played on this fear. The 

 result has been a mixing of fact, 

 fiction, myth and misinformation 

 preventing a clearer understanding 

 of the issue. This bee has been 

 moving north in South America for 

 almost 30 years and just recently, 

 (October 1990) arrived in Hidalgo, 

 Texas. 



In contrast to the AHB, the Euro- 

 pean honeybees have been delight- 

 ing humans with their honey for 



more than 40 centuries. The Bible 

 refers to this sublime nectar as "the 

 heavenly food" and describes certain 

 lands as "flowing with milk and 

 honey." 



White settlers were reported to 

 have brought the European honey- 

 bee to North America, where North 

 American Indians regarded it as a 

 creature of ill omen: "the white 

 man's fly." Today this "white man's 

 fly" is responsible for helping to 

 pollinate more than 90 difl"erent 

 cultivated crops with a combined 

 annual value of $30 billion. It is 

 easy to see why the honeybee is so 

 important to the nation's agricul- 

 tural economy. 



16 THE Plants MAN 



