Killer Bees Making Super Coffee

inblosam writes "An article at cnn.com describes how a insect-pollinated coffee bean plant actually has an increased yield, by 50 percent or more, when a killer bee does the pollination. The gene mixing allows for better gene selection, making better and bigger beans. Way to go killer bees. If the bees don't kill you, the gallons of coffee may." I guess I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee. Maybe the killer bees travel farther, mixing up the pollen better?

Comments

Not necessarily Killer Bees...

[Thornae]

The slightly older and briefer BBC article makes no reference to killer bees, merely honeybees. Possibly CNN needed a spin for their article. I guess the only way to know for sure is to read (and understand!) the Nature article in question. Any entomologists out there want to enlighten us?

Re:Not necessarily Killer Bees...

[kasparov]

I thought that Killer Bees were Africanized not African. Aren't they a mix/hybrid rather than pure African bees?

Technically, yes, Africanized honeybees were cross-bred from European and African honeybees. The African honeybee tends to do better in tropical climates, but tends to be more agressive. Since European honeybees don't do very well in the tropics, sicentists in South America tried to cross-breed the European and African honeybees to produce a bee that did well in tropical climates, but lacked the agressive tendencies of the African honeybee. They were unsuccessful and several swarms escaped into the wild.

So, although Africanized honeybees are what we consider "Killer Bees," their aggressive tendencies were inherited from the African honeybee. If you want to read more on the subject, try this link.

Yield 50% improved by ANY insect

[Linux_ho]

I guess I don't understand why it matters that it's a killer bee versus a regular bee.

The article sez coffee can self-pollinate, so they didn't think insects were required. Killer bees just happened to be the insects that moved in and started improving the cross-pollination between coffee plants. Any other insect would do just as well, but a headline with "Killer Bees" in the title will grab a lot more attention, as evidenced by the Slashdot link.

Re:Yield 50% improved by ANY insect

[realgone]

Any other insect would do just as well, but a headline with "Killer Bees" in the title will grab a lot more attention

I'll admit that, for a minute, I thought you were pulling my leg. But I went ahead and dropped "killer bees" into the last five Slashdot headlines and damned if they didn't seem more exciting all of a sudden.

• Visual Studio .Net: Now with more Killer Bees
• Science: Killer Bees Making Super Coffee (well, that one was fine as was...)
• Java Meets Killer Bees: Two Reviews (nice bit of serendipity there)
• Walmart Ships PCs With Killer Bees
• McAfee Manufactures Killer Bee Threat

I swear, there's some definite potential here...

CNN

[DustMagnet]

I was quite angry after reading this article on CNN. What's so wrong with journalism that they have to put a fake spin on articles. Some of this comes from the editors who titled the article "Killer Bees Make Killer Coffee". WTF?

The article is about how natural environment make better coffee than monoculture farming. Among many interesting things, they said that killer bees are better than no bees.

I sadly suspect that Slashdot would not have covered this without the killer bee hoopla.

Africanized Beez making better java ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a bee keeper I doubt that these are africanized bees. The original intent of the test program in the early 1950's to cross selected bee strains with african strains was to improve the general bee productivity in tropical climates.

Bees do not do well in areas like the tropics and as commercial agriculture has grown the need for pollination services has grown with it. [Today about one quarter of our agriculture in the continental United States requires pollination by honey bees.]

The first observations of africanized bees were that they were not as productive in either pollination or honey production. They are very sensitive to disturbance (as evidenced by the loss of livestock and human injury over the years in south america). They cannot be managed safely and without specific tests they cannot be identified by eye from non africanized strains.

The common european honey bee (bees are an old world insect and all bees in the western hemisphere are immigrants) is female, lives about six weeks and travels up to 2 miles from their hive. A typical bee hive has anywhere from 10 to 50 thousand bees.

The 'Mason Bee' is a solitary bee that while quite popular with some household gardeners has too short a life span and therefore cannot be effective in areas that have long growing seasons.

In north america the threats to bee hives are tracheal and varroa mites (pests imported from asia in the early 1980's), foul brood (a bacterial infection) and agricultural/residential pesticides and herbicides.

During the Reagan administration the approach was taken to let the movement of africanized bees proceed unchecked in the belief that constant exposure to feral bee populations would dampen their genome. What they had not counted on was that when a queen mates with an africanized male the africanization expresses itself by the africanized queen hatching one day earlier than the other non africanized queens. Once hatched the africanized queen expresses the normal instinct to kill the other queens in their egg chambers thereby insuring the continuance of the africanized genome.