Killer Bees From Outer Space (AKA Brazil)

Nightmare Now

Mad science, genetic manipulation, and BEES!?

1. It all began in 1922 with the birth of bright eyed baby boy Warwick Estevam Kerr, I guess it actually began 120 million years ago when bees first evolved, but 120 million years is a lot of history to cover in a single episode so we’ll skip ahead to Warwick
   1. The Son of scottish immigrants to the US and then to Brazil, he led a life mired in science
      1. He was an agricultural engineer
      2. Eventually got his doctorate
      3. Worked at universities, becoming a professor, a department head and even a dean, A research director and more.
      4. Interestingly he studied at columbia with a theodosius dobzhansky, famed geneticist, and also the great grandson of fyodor dostoyevsky, small world I guess. No relevance to the story
      5. Most importantly of all the things warwick kerr did outside of those contributions to society were his dabbling in mad science, and his constant experimentation and research of Beeeees
   2. In short he dreamed of creating the worlds most powerful bee, and he succeeded.
      1. In the americas, meaning north south and central we were using european honeybees to produce honey. Obviously europe is not a tropical climate like much of south america, so in his home country of brazil kerr tried to interbreed a species of bee that could do better at producing honey in such a climate.
      2. There were african bees from Tanganyika, a UK colonial territory in what is now modern day Tanzania; it existed from 1916 to 61. This was the east african lowland honeybee.
         1. Adept at producing honey in a hotter climate. Way more than the europeans
         2. More aggressive than european bees, sending out attacks with 3-4 times as much of the attack force of european bees. And they pursue threats further away
         3. They swarm more
            1. This means they move to a new hive quicker while eurobeeans would rather wait it out.
         4. They evolve with much less focus on keeping a hive warm so they have energy to spare in their behavior
            1. Not to say the african bees don’t have their own problems which might be more horrific
               1. The cape bee female impersonates the african bee queen and just moves into the hive, if you’ve got the bee species confused now that there’s three don’t worry it gets more complicated and the bees themselves are confused
               2. Especially when the cape bee infiltrator queen can lay eggs parthenogenetically, meaning she don’t need no man and produces live viable eggs asexually. These eggs hatch into clones of herself that can also make clones of themselves until the fake bees take over the hive and collapse it.
      3. Back to Kerr in 1957. He imported these african lowland bees to interbreed with his italian bees, that, although they don’t make as much honey when it’s hot
         1. He figured that the two bees combined over a few generations could combine their strengths and you would get a kickass warm weather honeybee that could make honey better than a european bee, and one that picked up the more laid back less aggressive temperament from the european bee.
         2. That’s when it all went wrong. Kerr was using queen excluders on his 29 combined beehives, a screen door cuck room so they couldn’t breed with the local european bees.
            1. In late october of 1957 a beekeeper that was covering for him or visiting the facility or something, as far as I can tell his or her name is lost to history. Saw the bees struggling to move around the screen.
            2. took the screen off all of the hives. My understanding is that it was a screen per hive but maybe it was around the facility,
               1. Don’t you think after the third one they would realize maybe these are SUPPOSED to be like that? NOT 25 more queens later? Maybe they got out and just immediately killed him in thousands of furious stings, I really can’t find much on this guy.
                  1. I’ve got a completely unfounded conspiracy theory that I’ll get into later.
               2. So he lets these genetically manipulated superbees out into the wilds of brazil. Of course they immediately get out of the beehives and start breeding with the native populations allo over the place and start rapidly expanding north and south.
         3. The entire amazon basin had been consumed by 1970. The cross bred bees, called africanized honeybees, and unofficially, the killer bee! were ruthlessly efficient at replacing the native populations and once pandoras box was open there was no closing it again. A
         4. They reached central america in 82 leaving a swath of beestuction in their fluffy black and yellow wake.
         5. By 85 the killer bee had taken southern mexico and had been spotted in an oil pipe shipment in california
         6. In 1990 the first permanent colony of killer bees was discovered in texas.
         7. Over the next several years the bees continued their inexorable tide northward, overbreeding, killing and replacing the native european bees.
         8. Skip ahead to the 2010s, there’s human deaths and attacks in
            1. UTAH
            2. GEORGIA
            3. TENNESSEE
            4. COLORADO
            5. AS FAR NORTH AS MARYLAND
            6. WE CAN’T HOLD THEM FOREVER
               1. Climate change
2. So what makes them killer bees anyway?
   1. Aggression. Bee apologists and a “Scientists” will be like it’s more of an acute defensiveness.
      1. African bees, have to compete with scorpions, ants, termites and the ever popular honey badger, known for it’s uncaring callousness in the face of a single beesting.
   2. Because of this heritage the africanized bee demonstrates this lethal “Defensiveness” in a number of ways. Deep breath
      1. They have more guard bees.
      2. They have a wider guard/alarm radius (1600 feet) from which just walking by can disturb them, loud noises, vibrations, funny looks, ects will all set them off. They are more easily provoked
      3. They will pursue threats to the hive greater distances (¼ mile) that’s a longer distance for a half an inch bee than it is for a person, keep that in mind.
         1. They're fucking relentless. You think you can jump into a pond like on winnie the pooh, and sure that works for the friendly neighborhood european bee, but these will buzz around the surface of the water waiting for you to come up for air in order to sting your stupid fac for existing within a quarter mile radius of their hive.
      4. They send the pain. Again and again
         1. Their sting isn’t inherently more venomous than a european bee, or more painful or anything. It’s estimated that 500-1100 stings is lethal but depending on the location of the sting 100 could do the trick.
         2. But they send many times as many attack bees as the natural counterparts, both proportionately and far overall number because:
   3. They group in far larger numbers than the native hives.
      1. They sting 10 times as much as the europeans, in greater numbers, in a wider radius, and more easily provoked, what’s not to like?
   4. They also live in the ground
      1. Because why not
   5. Most importantly they kill. About 2 people per year. And well over 1000 overall.
      1. Those stats don’t add up at all.
         1. 65 years, 2 people is 130.
         2. 870 people were killed in the great bee war of 89?
      2. They also kill animals, pets, horses, wild animals, cows, nothing is sacred to them.
3. Kerr was labeled a madman by the brazilian government and the world but it seems like everyone kind of got over it
   1. He did get into several science hall of fame type things and died a respected figure in beekeeping history at the ripe old age of 96 in 2018 at his home in sao paulo brazil.
4. That just leaves one question? Who was the mysterious beekeeper that let them all out that fateful october in 1957?
   1. Who indeed. A little over a decade before B Day in october of 57 was a little something called ww2.
   2. Nazi party members, Collaborators, SS officers and more assholes were desperately trying to escape the third reich collapsing out from underneath them.
   3. Where could they go? If only there was a part of the world that already harbored an unusually large number of german expats and had for some time now.
      1. That somewhere was south america, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and brazil, all over the place, there were germans and fascist sympathizers in the governments of these places, especially argentina, but I’ll cover this phenomena of South American Nazis, Hilter Clones, Jewish Nazi bounty hunters and lost treasure in another episode, probably series, that shit is insane.
      2. Was that an innocent but dim-witted ordinary beekeeper? Or was it a young adult clone of hitler himself, or less fantastically some other nazi scientist jackass?
      3. Could be, who knows?
      4. Probably not though, but the timeline works out and it just seems like a hellboy plot or something. NAZI SCIENTIST SPLINTER GROUP RELEASES DEMON BEES TO ATTACK AMERICA FOR REVENGE. Once again, we have our movie premise.
5. That’s all I got for tonight folks, thanks for listening, check out the site at nightmarenow.com to get in touch! We’ve got some awesome suggestions and a special shoutout to everyone that had my little show in your spotify wrapped. I love to see it!