Effort to Stop Killer Bees in Texas Is Short on Funds : Environment: Invasion began in earnest this spring, when federal money for eradication ran out. State lawmakers have not answered plea for aid.

Sixteen swarms of so-called “killer bees” have been found in southern Texas, but the state Senate, strapped for funds, is sitting on an emergency request for $197,000 to help track and destroy them.

“These can be mean, ornery bees and they’re establishing in Texas. The situation is a lot scarier today than we thought it would be,” said John Thomas, an entomologist with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service.

The aggressive, Africanized bees began migrating north from South America 30 years ago, and the first swarm reached Texas last October. But the invasion began in earnest with the spring “swarm season,” which ends June 1.

Apiary officials have set a line of 1,113 bee traps along the Texas-Mexico border. The papier-mache traps, shaped like upside down flower pots, hang from trees and are baited with a lemon-scented chemical. U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors destroyed the first five swarms of killer bees drawn to the traps, then painstakingly searched each site for signs of more of the bees.

Federal funds earmarked for the ground search ran out April 26, and agriculture officials turned to the state for help. But the prospects for state aid are limited as legislators in Austin struggle to meet a $4.6-billion budget shortfall.

More than 2 million Africanized bees are believed bound for South Texas. The traps lure only one-fourth of the bees traveling through, Thomas said. Unchecked, the bees will probably continue north toward Houston, eventually spreading throughout the Southeast and West into California. Officials hope to control the spread of killer bees by maintaining quarantines in the nine border counties where the bees have been found.

The killer bees are descendants of 26 African queen bees accidentally released from a Brazilian laboratory in 1957. As they migrated north, the African bees bred with European honeybees. The result: Africanized bees that, although smaller than the garden-variety honeybee, may chase their victims for a mile before descending en masse.

Although Africanized bees have killed some 600 people in the Americas over the past 30 years, “killer bee” is a misnomer, said Elba Quintero, manager of the USDA’s Africanized Honeybee Program in Harlingen, Tex. Like domestic honeybees, killer bees don’t sting unless provoked. Her advice: “If you disturb a colony, go as fast as you can in a zigzag pattern into a house, car or body of water. You can outrun them.”

The greater threat is an economic one, she said. Killer bees, which take over the territory they infest, produce less honey than their European cousins. That could put at risk the nation’s $150 million-a-year honey industry, and an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion worth of crops pollinated each year by honeybees.

Thomas said this year’s swarms constitute the scouting patrol. “By next spring we should see the bulk of the front passing through, a six-fold increase in the number of Africanized bees in Texas,” he said.