Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 19, 1994 TAG: 9403210178
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Killer bees - more accurately called Africanized honeybees - just can't stand lawnmowers and weed trimmers, says honeybee expert and researcher Anita Collins, who will speak about killer bees Sunday evening at Virginia Tech.
Collins said scientists don't know why the irritable insects, which so far have been found only in the extreme Southwest U.S., dislike lawn machinery. But she said it doesn't take much to work them into a frenzy that can last for days.
Although they're more often fractious than fatal, they can turn into killers, said Collins, who is with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Honey Bee Research Unit in Weslaco, Texas.
Africanized bees already have killed an elderly man in South Texas, where they've established a presence. But don't lock up the kids - or the lawnmower - just yet, she cautions.
"There's just been a lot of exaggeration of the danger," Collins said from her Dallas hotel Thursday. "They won't chase you down."
The man who died in South Texas was trying to remove a colony when he was stung about 40 times, far fewer times than would normally be fatal, she said.
Africanized bees are "excessively defensive of their colonies," she said, especially when compared with their laid-back European cousins that are common in the United States. If disturbed or perturbed, Africanized bees may attack people or animals, and severe stingings and pet and livestock deaths are on the rise, she said.
"The potential is there for some extreme defensive behavior and for loss of animals and human life," she said.
"It will be one more danger that we have to live with."
Part of Collins' job is to help people and farmers cope with the invasion from the south. The bees, brought to Brazil from Africa as an experiment in the 1950s because they do better in tropical climates than European bees, "sort of got loose" and have been droning inexorably northward ever since.
Collins predicted that as they move northward, they will breed with the more docile European bees creating an intermediate variety that may adapt to temperate climates like Virginia's. Hybrid bees already are showing up in Texas, Collins said.
"What we're going to get is mixing of all the types of honeybees that have been introduced to the various areas," she said.
"We'll get a melting pot."
For those venturing into areas where Africanized bees are common, repellents and insecticides are being developed.
Africanized bees also are a factor in what Collins sees as a "pollination crisis" in the next five years that could affect the $30 billion in crops that benefit from bee pollination each growing season. U.S. beekeepers already have lost European colonies to parasites.
Because of their jittery temperment, Africanized bees are harder to colonize and manage, and they're more likely to walk off the job over some minor gripe, Collins explained. As a result, they don't produce as much honey as European bees do.
"We're looking at a time when people are going to be hard-pressed to get bees," she said, noting that harvest quality and quantity suffer when bees are in short supply.
"We're already having problems," Collins said.
Collins will speak Sunday, 7:30 p.m., in 30 Pamplin Hall on the Virginia Tech campus. Her appearance is sponsored by the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology and the Women's Research Institute.
by CNB