Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 17, 1990 TAG: 9004170489
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: JOEL WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WESLACO, TEXAS LENGTH: Medium
Researchers predict the bees will enter the United States near the border city of Brownsville. In November, they were spotted 150 miles south of the border at Soto la Marina, Mexico, near the Gulf Coast.
None has been found near the border since, but their advance accelerates with spring as flowers provide food, said Anita Collins, head researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Honey Bee Research Lab at Weslaco.
These bees, descended from a tough African strain, have been spreading across South and Central America and Mexico since they escaped from a now-infamous Brazilian research program in 1957. Along the way they've killed an estimated 600 people, mostly in tropical South America, to earn their ominous nickname.
An Africanized bee's sting is no worse than a European bee's, but they were tagged "killers" because they tend to protect their colonies at the slightest disturbance, sending hundreds or thousands of defenders against intruders.
Africanized bees swarm - leave their hives to form new colonies - more regularly than the European honey bees commonly used in the Americas.
The difficulty of managing Africanized bees eventually will cost U.S. beekeepers $29 million to $58 million a year, the USDA estimates.
Bee pollination adds nearly $800 million in value, it is estimated, to U.S. crops each year.
U.S. residents along the border aren't likely to notice much change, beyond seeing more wild colonies and swarms of bees looking for new hives, said Collins, who has studied the Africanized bees for 14 years.
"They'll see bees . . . much more frequently than they're used to," she said. Some danger remains, she said, noting that in Venezuela a swarm chased her and other scientists to a truck about 100 yards away.
Researchers are monitoring 318 bee traps in southern Texas, as far west as Del Rio and as far north as the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge north of Corpus Christi, to track the bees' movement. There are 60,000 traps in Mexico.
Scientists will keep an eye on southern Texas and northern Mexico and destroy as many Africanized swarms as possible to slow their progress and buy time for research, Collins said.
"We're not going to try and sit on the border and destroy every swarm that comes across," she said. "This is an attempt to reduce these first pioneer swarms. But at some point, we're going to be overwhelmed."
No one knows how far north the bees will spread before the cold stops their expansion. In the Southern Hemisphere, they have not moved south of 32 degrees latitude, which north of the equator would mean Central Texas. The bees travel 250 to 350 miles a year, Collins said.
The first confirmed trapping in Texas will trigger an emergency plan, although the inter-agency Texas Honey Bee Management Plan is still being designed and has yet to get state funds.
The first step in the plan is a quarantine keeping anyone from moving bees out of the state's eight southernmost counties, said John Fick, one of the state's two apiary inspectors with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.
Beekeepers will be called on to ensure their queens remain European, since researchers believe European bees moderate the Africanized bees' behavior through interbreeding.
Scientists and beekeepers shun the "killer bee" appellation, and the Texas Beekeepers Association has launched a public relations campaign to tell people the Africanized bee won't be out searching for victims.
Fifteen to 20 people already die in the United States each year from allergic reactions to bee stings, the association points out.
Marilee Mace, who runs a crop pollination business with her husband, Glenn, president of the beekeepers association, believes beekeepers will remain the strongest line of defense.
"It's very important that we keep a healthy beekeeping industry, because if we lose those bees, then we have to live with whatever has moved into that void," she said. "And we don't want to do that."
by CNB