These adaptations include brood cycles synchronized with the bloom period of local flora, forming a winter cluster in colder climates, migratory swarming in Africa, enhanced (long-distance) foraging behavior in desert areas, and numerous other inherited traits.

According to Kerr, in October 1957 a visiting beekeeper, noticing that the queen excluders were interfering with the worker bees' movement, removed them, resulting in the accidental release of 26 Tanganyikan swarms of A. m. scutellata.

[5] Because their movement through these regions was rapid and largely unassisted by humans, Africanized honey bees have earned the reputation of being a notorious invasive species.

[6] The prospect of killer bees arriving in the United States caused a media sensation in the late 1970s, inspired several horror movies,[7] and sparked debate about the wisdom of humans altering entire ecosystems.

Bee experts theorized the colony had not traveled overland but instead "arrived hidden in a load of oil-drilling pipe shipped from South America.

Their expansion stopped for a time at eastern Texas, possibly due to the large population of European honey bee hives in the area.

On 11 September 2007, Commissioner Bob Odom of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry said that Africanized honey bees had established themselves in the New Orleans area.

[20] In tropical climates they effectively out-compete European honey bees and, at their peak rate of expansion, they spread north at almost two kilometers (about 1¼ mile) a day.

There were discussions about slowing the spread by placing large numbers of docile European-strain hives in strategic locations, particularly at the Isthmus of Panama, but various national and international agricultural departments could not prevent the bees' expansion.

African honey bees abscond (abandon the hive and any food store to start over in a new location) more readily than European honeybees.

Africanized honey bees begin foraging at young ages and harvest a greater quantity of pollen compared to their European counterparts (Apis mellifera ligustica).

This may be linked to the high reproductive rate of the Africanized honey bee, which requires pollen to feed its greater number of larvae.

A study comparing A. m. scutellata and A. m. ligustica published by Fewell and Bertram in 2002 suggests that the differential evolution of this suite of behaviors is due to the different environmental pressures experienced by African and European subspecies.

[25] For example, European honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) forage at older ages and harvest less pollen and more concentrated nectar.

Africanized honey bees have slightly shorter wings, which can only be recognized reliably by performing a statistical analysis on micro-measurements of a substantial sample.

Some belong to A. m. intermissa, but others have an indeterminate origin; the Egyptian honeybee (Apis mellifera lamarckii), present in small numbers in the southeastern U.S., has the same morphology.

According to the scientists who analyzed its genetic code, the western honey bee originated in Africa and spread to Eurasia in two ancient migrations.

The small number of honey bees with African ancestry that were introduced to Brazil in 1956, which dispersed and hybridized with existing managed populations of European origin and quickly spread across much of the Americas, is an example of a massive biological invasion as earlier told in this article.

Here, they analysed whole-genome sequences of 32 Africanized honey bees sampled from throughout Brazil to study the effect of this process on genome diversity.

As a prophylactic measure, the majority of beekeepers in North America tend to requeen their hives annually, maintaining strong colonies and avoiding hybridization.

Humans stung many times by the Africanized honey bees can exhibit serious side effects such as inflammation of the skin, dizziness, headaches, weakness, edema, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting.

Some cases even progress to affecting different body systems by causing increased heart rates, respiratory distress, and even renal failure.

[43][44] Africanized honey bee sting cases can become very serious, but they remain relatively rare and are often limited to accidental discovery in highly populated areas.

The Africanized honey bee is widely feared by the public,[45] a reaction that has been amplified by sensationalist movies (such as The Swarm) and some of the media reports.

[46] As the Africanized honey bee spreads through Florida, a densely populated state, officials worry that public fear may force misguided efforts to combat them: News reports of mass stinging attacks will promote concern and in some cases panic and anxiety, and cause citizens to demand responsible agencies and organizations to take action to help ensure their safety.

"Killer bee" is a term frequently used in media such as movies that portray aggressive behavior or actively seeking to attack humans.

Wild and managed colonies will sometimes be seen to fight over honey stores during the dearth (periods when plants are not flowering), but this behavior should not be confused with the aforementioned activity.

This is the reason why they have gained a reputation as superior honey producers, and those beekeepers who have learned to adapt their management techniques now seem to prefer them to their European counterparts.

However, this practice can be expensive, since these queens must be bought and shipped from breeder apiaries in areas completely free of Africanized honey bees, such as the northern U.S. states or Hawaii.

Prominent among these are locating bee-yards much farther away from human habitation, creating barriers to keep livestock at enough of a distance to prevent interaction, and education of the general public to teach them how to properly react when feral colonies are encountered and what resources to contact.