Significant correlations between 25 quantitative characters of worker
honey bees used for the morphometric identification of Africanized hon
ey bees (Apis mellifera), seven measures of colony defence and 12 for
alarm pheromone production were calculated from data on colonies in Lo
uisiana, USA, and Monagas, Venezuela, two years after the arrival of A
fricanized honey bees in the eastern portion of Venezuela. The bees in
the Venezuela group were identified as European (70%), European with
evidence of introgression of Africanized genes (5%), Africanized with
evidence of introgression of European genes (7%) and Africanized (18%)
, indicative of a population undergoing hybridization. For the Venezue
lan population alone, the correlations between defensive behaviour and
morphometric identification as Africanized were not significant. Ther
efore, defensive behaviour alone is not an adequate indicator for iden
tification or certification programmes in areas undergoing Africanizat
ion.