re: What happened to the Killer bees that were supposed to take over?

The same thing that happened to all the acid rain that was going to demolish all the rainforests and kill us all.

Oh, and the ice age that was also going to kill us all.

Pardon me if I have a healthy distrust of todays climate alarmists to constantly need to readjust their data to support their current crisis and grant application scams.

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I remember in the 70’s all the movies about the African killer bees taking over and killing us…

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My biggest fears of childhood in the 70s and early 80s were killer bees, sharks, quicksand, and thermonuclear Armageddon… in that order.

The males didn't stop and ask for directions. They all ended up in Argentina.

You didn’t fear the devil worshippers who lurked in every patch of woods?

Interestingly enough, this was just put out yesterday by the NC State Extension:

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The Africanized honey bee was first detected in the United States in 1990 in south Texas (Figure 2). For three years, their distribution was confined to the southern part of that state. In 1993, however, the AHB was detected in Arizona, and by 1995, they were detected in New Mexico and southern California. The bees then spread north, and by 1998 they were found in Nevada. In every state where they became established, the bees continued their migration northward over the next few years. By 2004, the bees had migrated through Texas and were detected in the southern most counties of Oklahoma.

For reasons that are yet unclear, the eastward spread of the AHB stalled in Texas for many years. This unexpected hiatus in home-range expansion was hypothesized to be a result of climate or other ecological factors. Nonetheless, by 2005 the AHB expanded eastward from Houston. Most recently, the AHB has become established in western Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas, and southern Florida (Figure 2). It remains unclear how the AHB entered Florida, given the lack of positive AHB findings along the gulf coast, thus it seems likely that the bees were independently introduced on cargo ships through commercial shipping ports.

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NCSU Extension
The report focuses on North Carolina, but gives a good overall history and current range.

When I was a kid, I feared the Bermuda Triangle . I thought the Triangle would zap me into another dimension if I had to take a plane to the Bahamas.

murder hornets and killer bees wiped each other out to the point of extinction in the last few years, or maybe it was covid that decimated both populations.

Here is a little Savage Bees trivia.

At 55:50, the man in the jail cell who says "What's so good about it?" was played by the then sheriff of St John Parish, Lloyd Johnson. All of the sheriff's department filming took place on location at the sheriff's office in Laplace in 1976.

And that's Wayne Mack at 49:23. He was the play-play-play man for the New Orleans Saints in the late 1970s!

A funny thing about the non-native African Honeybee is the fact that it was first imported to South America because the Western (or European) Honeybee, itself non-native, wasn't all that well suited for the heat and humidity of South America. Of course, the big drawback is how aggressive the African Honebee is as a species, so they tried to breed that out of them. However, those efforts didn't exactly work out very well. Now, you not only have the Western Honeybee which has to be babied in that part of the world, but you have the hybrids which are a bit heartier, but are more aggressive AND you have the African Honeybees that became wild that are just assholes. A problem that was complicated by a solution.

Nevermind that Honeybees (European or African) aren't really very efficient pollinators, and they tend to be a detriment to native bee populations that are much better pollinators. Just a mess......but hey, we better save the bees, just not the bees that people believe need saving.