Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104140144
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Short
Rainy spring weather in the northern Mexico state of Tamaulipas helped bring on the movement, said Elba Quintero, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Africanized honey bee program in Harlingen.
In Austin on Friday, the Texas House tentatively approved a $197,000 emergency appropriation to help combat the bees, a defensive hybrid responsible for deaths in Latin America.
The bees were brought from Africa to Brazil by a scientist and escaped from a laboratory in 1957.
Honey producers are worried they will harm Texas' $11 million honey industry, the nation's sixth largest, by disrupting the role domesticated bees play in pollinating many commercial crops.
"We expect an Africanized swarm to be in our traps any day now because this is swarming season," said Henry Graham, head of the Rio Grande Valley Beekeepers' Association. "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're out there and they're going to be here any day now."
Quintero said the biggest concentration has advanced to the area around San Fernando on the Gulf Coast, 75 miles south of the Rio Grande. The main front of bees is not expected to reach the border for another year, she said.
The bees are moving primarily through the lush jungles of the eastern Sierra Madre mountain range, she said.
by CNB