Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 20, 1993 TAG: 9305200042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The reason is that in tropical areas, the less aggressive hybrids may be unable to compete with fully African bees, leaving the African bees to carry on.
That complicates strategies that seek to dilute the killer bee characteristics through interbreeding, at least in southern parts of the United States, said co-author H. Glenn Hall.
Killer bees, formally called African bees or Africanized bees, generally are not deadly but they sting with less provocation and in greater numbers than other bees do in defending their colonies. They reached the United States from Mexico in 1990.
Hall, of the University of Florida in Gainesville, and Jon Harrison at Arizona State University in Tempe report in today's issue of the journal Nature that African-European hybrid bees showed lower rates of peak metabolism than African bees did. The rates were equal to or lower than those of European bees.
That might lead to slower flight and less maneuverability, possibly dooming hybrids in competition with African bees, Hall said.
That effect would occur mainly in tropical and subtropical areas like south Texas, where African bees are better adapted than European bees, he said. But European bees do better further north, even in the middle of Texas, so more hybrids would be expected to survive there, he said.
Anita Collins of the U.S. Agriculture Department said that even in south Texas, hybrids now make up much of the wild bee population sampled. That is because beekeepers repeatedly bring European queen bees into their hives, she said. That keeps the commercial bee population as European as possible, a counterpressure to African bees as the wild and commercial populations mate.
by CNB