Africanised and European honey bees on honeycomb. The Africanised honey bee (left) is a hybrid of the African honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata) and European honey bee species, such as Apis mellifera ligustica and Apis mellifera iberiensis. They are the result of the accidental release of Tanzanian bees in Brazil in 1957. The Africanised bees are defensive, and as European queen bees tend to mate preferentially with African drones, the Africanised variety is replacing the European. Africanised bees are difficult to distinguish from the European varieties, although the two bees shown here do have distinctive colour differences.