Buzzing Bees

You may or may not be aware, but the vast majority of all Arizona honey bees are Africanized (killer bees). They have a rightfully-deserved fearsome reputation, but there are a lot of great things about these bees. For starters, they are wonderful pollinators and have shown a stronger resistance to neonicotinoids (the stuff found in many insecticides that kills bees) than many other bee species. They also only attack when you’re close to a hive and provide warnings before attacking. Several bees will actually fly into any creatures they deem as beeing too close, so if you ever have bees flying into you, best turn around. After a number of headbutts and the continued approach of a trespasser, the killer bee hive may then mobilize their troops and attack, earning their “killer” reputation.  Africanized bees can be kind of scary, but they rarely cause death and at least they warn us. The toxic outdoor chemicals we use (insecticides, roundup, etc) just cause instant death to our tiny friends, and slow, cancerous deaths to us. Please just stop using any type of outdoor chemical that ends in “cide”