The archive / Health and environment
1975–1995 · USA
Killer bees heading north!
Killer bees
Panic meter
The verdict
According to the alarms, Africanised bees would kill thousands of Americans. They arrived – but there were few deaths.
Reality meter
What was said?
In 1957, African bees escaped from a research project in Brazil and began interbreeding with European honeybees. The new hybrid was more aggressive and spread northwards. During the 1970s, "killer bees" became a film genre in their own right, with The Swarm (1978) as the best-known example.
The verdict: what happened next?
The bees reached Texas in 1990 and have since spread across the southern United States. They are more defensive than ordinary bees, and a few people do die from attacks – but far fewer than the alarms predicted. Beekeepers have learnt to manage them.
The alarm had a genuine kernel of truth, but the horror films' scale never materialised.
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