Sheriff Donald McKew (Ben Johnson) finds his dog dead. Believing that someone poisoned it, he takes the dog to the coroner in New Orleans to have it autopsied and find out what kind of poison was used. On duty is Dr. Jeff DuRand (Michael Parks). Jeff is not the regular coroner but is the assistant medical examiner that is filling in during Mardi gras. The sheriff talks him into doing the autopsy. Jeff finds the dog’s stomach full of bees. Then a dead man is brought in with the same cause of death.
Jeff calls Jeannie Devereaux (Gretchen Corbett), an expert in melittology. Jeannie examines the bees but finds nothing unusual. Then she finds out that the dead man was a seaman from a freighter that collided with a banana boat from Brazil on the Mississippi. Jeannie calls the national bee stock center and asks Dr. Rufus Carter for assistance. In talking to him, Jeff learns that the bees that are killing people are Africanized honeybees from South America.
Dr. Jorge Meuller (Horst Buchholz) is South America’s leading expert on insect genetics. Rufus contacts him and asks for his assistance. Rufus flies into New Orleans. His plan is to go into the hive and extract the queen bee. He will then substitute a different queen that will pass on milder traits to the swarm. In the meantime, the swarm is killing more people and is making its way to the city of New Orleans.
“The Savage Bees” was released in 1976 and was directed by Bruce Geller. It is a made for television American science fiction eco-horror, or nature-horror film, and one of many beesploitation films that were based on warnings about killer bees from South America.
The film won an Emmy for Film Sound Mixing. The original film aired on NBC and had a theatrical released in Britain. A sequel called “Terror Out of the Sky” aired on CBS in 1978.
While the 50’s spawned giant insects due to atomic radiation, the 70’s was the decade of eco-terror in the form of swarms of insects or other creatures that hadn’t mutated into giants, but were nonetheless, deadly when you got a lot of them together unionized. Although it was a made for television movie, it was one of the first to exploit the Africanized killer bee phenomenon that was in the news. It is also one of the better-done films of the subgenre and does have a more science-based look at the issue.
The bee wrangler was Norman Gary, an entomologist and consultant on the film. He also played one of the victims. I believe he was the pirate with the sword.
The Africanized honeybee, or killer bee, is a hybrid created by mating the more aggressive African bee with the gentler Italian honeybee. This was an attempt to create a bee that produced more honey. The experiment backfired when the dominant African bee traits took over. The cross breeding was done in Brazil. Sometime in 1957, twenty-six swarms escaped quarantine. The hybrid reached North America in 1985. Although not as vicious as portrayed in films, Africanized honeybees have killed at least 1,000 people, as well as horses and other animals.