I mentioned in the previous post that I watched a documentary on Africanized bees last week. I learned a lot of things about bees in spite of the overarching humanist framework that clouded the perspective of the entire documentary-- "We have to learn to live in haaaaaaaaaaaaaarmony with the apian world!" Yuck, isn't it enough that I make weak attempts to live in harmony with the human world? I also could have done without the dramatic bass-thumping, five-minute death scene in which a nest of Africanized bees attack a man in his yard... especially the part where he's writhing around on the ground with insects blanketing his body. Not very educational.
Okay, Animal Planet documentaries have their faults. Let's just say I learned one really cool fact about bees and that made it worth while.
In AFRICA, where Africanized bees obviously originate, beekeepers have tried to relocate their colonies to South Africa-- however, another species of bee (the Cape bee) already lives there. The Cape bee has an adaptation to the high winds in this area-- their queens are often blown away from the nest, so the workers have the ability to lose the reproductive suppression that the queen imparts. Basically, the workers can become queens. These Cape bees are sometimes able to infiltrate the African bee hives, where they begin to lay unfertilized eggs that are basically just clones of themselves. The African bees care for the Cape bee larvae and original imposter queen as if she were part of their hive... and kill their own queen. Meanwhile, the Cape bees do not forage for food and simply live as freeloaders until the nest is run into the ground.
Those Cape bees are mooching superheroes-- a role model for all those moochers I knew in college.
I don't believe anything I hear on TV: Sources
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622343.600-cape-invaders.html
http://www.beekeeping.org/articles/us/battle_of_the_bees.htm
http://westmtnapiary.com/africanized_bees.html
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6 comments:
so do the Cape bees make their own nests without someone to mooch off of? (what did they do before the introduction of the new species?)
Wait, the doc shows a man getting killed by bees? And someone FILMED it? That's horrible!
Cape bees have their own nests, and when the new species was introduced, they started displaying this parasitic behavior. I think it's possible that the threat of Cape bee invasion limits African bee range (excluding human intervention). What do you think?
And Andy... I think it was a dramatic re-enactment, but it was disturbing nonetheless.
that seems possible.
i am surprised that they would have preserved this behavior without the selective pressure, though
Well, I think the basic mechanism evolved because of the high winds, and this parasitism is just an accident that occurs when the bees are in a hive completely without pheromone suppression. That way, they didn't evolve to take over other hives, but to be reproductive if they are blown away from their own hive. Do you think that makes more sense?
that makes a lot of sense, actually
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