Abstract

The accidental release of 26 African honey bee queens (Apis mellifera scutellata) in Brazil in 1957 was the beginning of the Africanization process of honey bees in South America. This was highly impacting on beekeeping across the continent, because, despite being more productive, African honey bees were very aggressive. Many attempts to cross European x African bees were done in order to obtain less aggressive bees (Michener, 1975). There are slight morphological differences between African and European honeybees. In terms of beekeeping management, however, behavioral differences are more important. Besides stinging, another important difference is hygienic behavior. African honeybees are known to be more effective in eliminating dead larvae and pupae than their European counterparts (Guzman-Novoa et al., 1999). Despite the Africanization, there are still regions with a predominance of European subspecies. For example, in Argentina, there was a significant introduction of European subspecies in highly saturated Africanized honey bee regions in order to slow down the Africanization process. This provided more European gene frequency in