High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Africanized honey bees, known colloquially as "killer bees", are a hybrid variety of the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), generated by a man-made breeding of the African honey bee, A. m. scutellata, with various European honey bees such as the Italian bee A. m. ligustica and A. m. iberiensis. These bees are far more aggressive than the European subspecies. Small swarms of Africanized bees are capable of taking over European honey bee hives by invading the hive and establishing their own queen after killing the European queen.