What are Africanized Honey Bees?
For centuries, beekeepers worldwide have cultivated the European (or Western) honeybee, Apis mellifera, for their desirable traits, such as winter hardiness, disease resistance, tendency not to swarm, and overall gentleness. Along with producing honey, honeybees are important for pollination of plants. Many foods and fibers produced for humans rely on honeybee pollination. However, the European honeybee tends to be less productive than other honeybee species (such as the more aggressive African honeybee, Apis mellifera scutellata) in tropical climates.
In the 1950s, researchers in Brazil crossbred European and African honeybees to improve honey production. As the “Africanized” bees increased in population, they began to move and increase their range, eventually crossing America’s border with Mexico in 1990. The Africanized bees we see today are more defensive (aggressively attacking perceived threats to their colony), more tolerant of extreme weather conditions, and more apt to swarm (divide the colony).
Typically, the role of the Africanized honeybee occupies the same niche as its predecessor and provides a valuable service by pollinating the hundreds of plants found at Tonto National Monument. Bees are generalists, meaning they harvest nectar from a wide variety of plants.
Africanized honeybees live in hives where they store honey and rear their young. These hives are established in a variety of crevices, including those found in the ground, trees, and rock faces. It is the hives in the rock faces immediately adjacent to the cliff dwellings at Tonto National Monument that are particularly susceptible to encounters between humans and bees.
When did they get here?
In 1994, the first hive was observed in Arizona. In 1997, park staff sent away bee samples to the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, where tests confirmed that the bees were “Africanized.” Records of nuisance bees at Tonto National Monument began as early as the 1930s when rangers complained of bees pestering visitors. These were only European bees, but as both the number of visitors and the percentage of Africanized bees have increased in the park so has the threat of attacks.
How do we manage Africanized Bees?
Park staff assumes that all hives seen today in the park are at least partially Africanized, which affects management decisions. In order to ensure visitor health and safety this means that sometimes the cliff dwellings may need to be closed to public use due to aggressive bee behavior. Aggressive behavior begins as bees pelting (physically bumping) a perceived threat (including humans) and may escalate to stinging should the perceived threat (including humans) persist. Tonto National Monument devotes considerable resources to minimizing these incidents every year.
For example, some of the tactics used to remove bee hives in the past included:
- Spraying hives with pressurized soapy water from a fire hose.
- Rappelling into the cliffs to chemically treat hives with insecticide.
- Climbing up precariously placed ladders to fill rock crevices with cement.
- Setting pheromone traps to lure queens away from the hive.
- Installing remote bait stations to contaminate hives with insecticide.
Each method has a variety of logistical hazards, and some were ineffective or resulted in unacceptable risk to the archeological sites below. With the help of Integrated Pest Management specialists and other experts, Tonto National Monument is currently researching new methods that will hopefully prove to be more safe and effective.
What do you need to know before entering Tonto National Monument?
There have been incidents throughout the park’s history where park staff and visitors have been stung by bees. A few of these have been multiple sting events, though no one has ever been attacked by a colony. However, this kind of behavior has been observed in other parts of Africanized honeybee range and, on occasion, has resulted in the severe injury or death of a human or pet.
Because of this, park staff members are extremely conservative in allowing visitors to enter areas where there is significant bee activity. If you have arrived on a day when the cliff dwelling is closed, please respect the staff’s decision and enjoy the view of the dwelling from a safe distance. Whether the bees are active or not, the park has many beautiful sights to see and things to learn.
Please help us to keep our park safe for both visitors and residents by doing your part and abiding closures.
Safety Tips:
- Wear light colored clothing and remove sunglasses (bees are naturally alarmed by dark colors likely owing to the color of the animals that raid their hives).
- Avoid wearing perfumes or aromatic lotions and hair care products (bees are drawn to these and may get a little too curious).
- Move at a comfortable pace and avoid exhaustion (bees seem to sense stress and often react unfavorably towards it).
- Hike in the cooler times of the day (bees are more active when it is hot and visitors are more physically stressed when hot).
- Avoid dramatic motions, especially arm sweeping.
If You Are Pelted or Stung:
- Remain calm and identify your fastest route of evacuation.
- Move as quickly as possible out of the area.
- Shield your airways (nose and mouth) with clothing.
- Tell a park ranger about the incident as soon as you have guaranteed your own safety.
Contact a medical facility if you have a known allergy to bee venom or were stung multiple times. Once you are in a protected area, remove the stingers as soon as possible. Remove the stingers by scraping them away with a fingernail, credit card, or similar instrument, and then clean the sting site with soap and water. Never pinch or otherwise attempt to pull stingers out, which could inject the remaining contents of the venom sacs.
