African Honey Bee Lab Report

Adapt a Beast: African Honeybee
Africanized honey bees are already able to survive in unpredictable weather conditions. They are more evolved in this way the other species of honey bee. Africanized bees became more common than regular European honey bees. Since they can breed more quickly they became over populated.

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In a lab in Arizona hundreds of colonies of bees were brought in to pollinate the genetically modified fruits and vegetables while they were being tested. The lab was mostly dedicated to corn but they were also growing peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and pears. The goal was to create a bigger, tougher, sweeter plant that wouldn’t be harmed by pesticides or the cold.
The bees started harvesting the nectar to make into honey in the early stages of the plants’ modifications, they were not ready for human consumption. The chemicals meant to enhance the corn contaminated the whole plant, including the nectar. When the worker bees and the queen ate the contaminated honey in the
In his report, biologist John Anderson, bee specialist, wrote: “Africanized honey bees are evolved so that they can survive in conditions with limited resources. The hives of bees currently pollinating the plants in our lab have plenty of nectar to make into honey. The bees seem to getting larger. This is rather disturbing to me because Africanized honey bees are already a very aggressive species of bee, they are nicknamed ‘killer bees.’ Yesterday afternoon I saw something very strange on one of our cameras. One of the worker bees was perched on a peach making strange slashing movements with its front legs. Then it stuck its head straight down into the ‘slashed’ are. When looking at the video from other angles it could be clearly seen that the bee had scooped up the peach flesh in its mandibles. Soon after the bee flew