The true honey bee was not native to the Americas. Prior to Columbus, people in Central and South America collected honey from bees known as "stingless bees." Although stingless bees do actually lack a stinger, they are not completely defenseless. They can inflict painful bites with their mandibles. They also do not produce honey in the same quantity as A. mellifera.

In the early part of the 16th century, the Spanish brought over the first honey bee colonies. English colonists did the same and soon honey bees had escaped into the wild and were buzzing all over North America. In some cases, the honey bees travelled in advance of the European settlers and came in contact with Native American tribes, who dubbed them "white man's flies." By the time the frontier had been settled, late in the 19th century, honey bees were regarded as a natural part of the insect world in North America.

In Brazil and other tropical areas, the introduced honey bees did not survive as well as they did in temperate climates. In an effort to improve honey production in the tropics, a scientist began some breeding experiments using some of the common European honey bees and crossing them with the A. mellifera scutellata bees. This Africanized mixture proved to have the highly defensive behavior of the African race. In 1957 some of the bees escaped, and they have been slowly spreading northwards ever since. Africanized honey bees reached Arizona in 1993.

More than 211,000 beekeepers maintain about 3.2 million honey bee colonies in the United States. Beekeepers often use their bees for pollination of crops rather than for honey production. In fact, one third of our food production is the direct result of pollination by insects. So, although we will have to be more cautious of honey bees in the future, they will remain an important part of our environment.

Apis mellifera scutellata or Killer Bees are from Africa originally. They made it to America in a long migration which started in Brazil some 40 years ago. The bee however is no common bee it has been known to defend its hive vigorously, and attacked anything that irritates their boundary. The bee was brought to Brazil in order to produce a hardier bee for honey producers. The idea was to combine the European bee with the more aggressive African bee; however, this did not work because before any experiments could take place some 26 colonies of Africanized bees escaped the laboratory and made their way to the local bee population. The end result was the will known Killer Bees. This new breed soon began to thrive in the tropical climates, and after awhile began to find its way to farmlands and urban enclaves. Since the Africanized bee was a mixture of both European and African decent its behavior was unpredictable and because a few people did not fully understand the behavior of the bees was the reason they got hurt..

The bees migration has been going steadily north, and by the 70's it was seen in Central America. By this time the bees had engulfed South American and therefore no country was spared from the Killer Bees migration. The only thing that could slow the Killer Bee were geographical barriers like the Andes Mountains, but even these Mts. could not stop the Killer Bee from invading Peru and Chile. There were alot of things people did not know about the bee, for example they did not know how the bee was going to affect the local bee population and how far the bee would go north. The only thing scientist did known was that it was coming to America and sooner than they expected. The bees migration had been going along warm tropical climates and the true test for the bee was how it was going to react to the continuously changing weather of North America. This was soon going to be put to the test when the first killer bee hive was seen in Hidalgo county, Texas; the date was October 16, 1990. Since Texas was the first to be affected by the migration it was only natural for them to put up strict guide lines on the honey producers. The guidelines consisted of not transporting any bee colonies without a permit. These guidelines where strict because the state of Texas did not want the bees to be spread any faster than they already had. Since the bees were labeled dangerous the counties that were affected were put in quarantine and the guidelines for honey producers were put into affect. Texas was not the only state to be affected. There were others states like New Mexico, Arizona and California. These states are not however as badly infected like Texas but they do have a growing problem on managing the migration of the bees.