‘Killer Bees’--State Wins the First Round

Africanized bee experts said Monday that the first round in the fight against the so-called “killer bees” in California has been won, but warned that the big battle is yet to come.

After inspecting 22,000 apiaries in Kern County since the first of 12 Africanized bee colonies was discovered in the state last summer, state officials Monday lifted a quarantine on 1,088 square miles of the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Scientists discovered that the small number of Africanized queens had been so outnumbered by the millions of more docile European honeybees in the area that the much-feared aggressive behavior of the African bee had been genetically diluted.

Discovered in June

A state-federal task force on the bees was established after a colony of Africanized bees was discovered in June by a heavy equipment operator working in a Lost Hills oil field 45 miles northwest of Bakersfield. Officials quarantined the area and entomologists were sent in to inspect commercial hives that might have been infiltrated by Africanized bees. Eventually, 11 more colonies were discovered, seven in commercial apiaries and four in the wild. All were destroyed.

Bee experts theorized that the colony arrived hidden in a load of oil drilling pipe shipped from South America.

While the immediate threat to the state’s farms and nearby urban areas has passed, Rex Magee, associate director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said the swarms of Africanized bees that are now steadily migrating north from South and Central America are expected to reach California within five years.

More Aggressive

When those Africanized bees arrive in greater numbers it is feared that they will genetically overwhelm domestic varieties. Africanized bees are far more aggressive than domestic bees and are far less efficient crop pollinators.

The African bee was introduced into Brazil in 1956 during an ill-fated research project. Several queens escaped and, once in the wild, reproduced rapidly and have moved north into Central America, interbreeding with native bees along the way.

European honeybees are used to pollinate 50 California crops worth about $4 billion a year and beekeepers sell about $18 million worth of honey annually and earn another $12 million a year in pollination fees, according to Steve Park, president of the California Bee Keepers Assn. He gave state and federal officials high marks for the way they handled the recent African bee crisis.

The fact that the Africanized bees discovered in Lost Hills reproduced numerous times indicates that Africanized strains can survive the cold weather of San Joaquin Valley winters, explained Norman E. Gary, a University of California, Davis, entomologist and Africanized bee expert.

Cause for Concern

“Their survival there indicates that we should be very, very concerned about the migration of the Africanized colonies,” Gary said. “Time is of the essence. We must come up with some solutions to this problem within the next six to 10 years or we’ll have a severe problem.

“Public health is very much an issue, especially in large cities like Los Angeles, because (urban areas) are ideally suited for reproduction, the Africanized bees can find shelter there, find an abundance of food and reproduce, establishing more wild colonies,” Gary said.

The state plans a three-pronged effort to mitigate the effect of the Africanized bee migration, according to Magee. There will be increased surveillance at ports of entry, inspectors will step up monitoring and sampling of wild hives and new university research programs will be financed to learn more about the African bee reproduction.