Hunting for killer bees' fury genes.

Bee geneticists speculate that a relatively small number of genes drives Africanized honeybees to their stinging frenzy.

One area of a bee chromosome, perhaps just one gene, accounts for some 13 percent of the variance in stinging behavior, report Greg J. Hunt of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and his colleagues in the March Genetics. The group describes a genetic analysis of 162 colonies of hybrid honeybees. Besides the one genetic hot spot, four other regions seemed "suggestive."

Hunt and his colleagues bred an Africanized male with a mild-mannered European honeybee queen. The researchers tested the ferocity of colonies of the bees' descendants by counting stingers left in a black suede patch waved near the bees. The feistiest colonies pumped more than 100 stings into the patch, sometimes 150, in just 60 seconds. By tracing genetic markers from both the mild bees and the killers, researchers linked high stinging fury to particular genetic regions.

Coauthor Robert E. Page Jr. of the University of California, Davis notes precedents for finding genes that control an insect's behavior. For example, two or three genes determine whether honeybees forage for nectar or for pollen.

Hunt points out that understanding stinging genetics might someday lead to gentler bees. However, he finds the research interesting for its exploration of genetic control of a behavior, particularly one that results in a bee's death. "It's very altruistic for a worker bee to go out and sting somebody," he says.