Killer bees are calming down

A year later, I was working bees in Kenya, where in Swahili the honeybee is called “kali” — a word that means “fierce.” I was happy that I still owned my tailor-made coveralls. I dreaded opening the hive. The neighbors across the fence got even angrier than the bees.

A year later, I was working bees in Kenya, where in Swahili the honeybee is called “kali” — a word that means “fierce.” I was happy that I still owned my tailor-made coveralls. I dreaded opening the hive. The neighbors across the fence got even angrier than the bees.

That bee belonged to the subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata, the African race dubbed a killer after it was introduced to Brazil in 1956. Twenty-six queens escaped from a research project there, and the bees flew north, interbreeding with more docile resident honeybees. But they retained much of their frighteningly defensive behavior. Tales of carnage the “Africanized” killer bees left in their wake were numerous and terrifying. Occasionally they were even true. People died.

So when the opportunity arose recently to work with the so-called killer bees in southeastern Mexico, I bought a spanking-new, brilliant white suit of heavy fabric, bee-tight with its zip-on “fencers’ veil.”