First ‘Killer Bees’ From South America Arrive in Texas

The feared “killer bees” from South America have reached U.S. soil, but other than a quarantine placed on beekeepers in eight Texas counties Thursday their arrival came with little fanfare.

“We’ve been expecting it for the past four or five years,” said Glenn Mace of Edinburg, president of the Texas Beekeepers Assn. “At first we got a lot of adverse publicity scaring people to death. They were looking at clouds of bees coming in. It’s calmed down now.”

Federal officials on Wednesday confirmed that a swarm of about 3,000 of the Africanized bees was found in a bee monitoring trap outside Hidalgo at the southernmost tip of Texas. The bees are a hybrid of South American honey bees and bees introduced from Africa. They are easily provoked to sting.