How did the Africanized Honey Bee get to the US if they are from Africa?
In 1956 a scientist by the name of Dr. Kern brought 26 African honey bee queens from a tropical area of Africa to Brazil. The reason for this was that our EHB was not producing very much honey in South America because the EHB is not a tropical honey bee. The introduction of this new bee from Africa increased honey production from 35lbs a colony per year to 125lbs per year. These African honey bee queens were introduced into hives that were used for experiments and testing. At some point these queens or hives swarmed or escaped and moved into the wild jungles of South America where they grew and took over the wild honey bee populations. As these wild African bees grew and swarmed they moved out in every direction mating with the local wild colonies becoming the highbred Africanized Honey Bee (AHB) that we have today. Swarms of AHB will migrate up to 50 miles and with their constant swarming the AHB front will move 150 to 200 miles a year. This migration has been going on since 1956 and
