San Diego Prepares Tactics to Battle Killer Bee Swarms : Insects: Hyperactive strain could reach area in 1994 and hit L.A. soon after. Volunteers for hot lines sought.

The briefing at the San Diego Fire Department last week turned from the routine to the unthinkable: Africanized honeybees. Killer bees.

Even these hardened veterans of crisis and fear could not contain their anxiety.

“Jesus Christ,” one old-timer muttered as he contemplated the kinds of rescue missions his fellow workers may be called to perform, tactics not found in training manuals.

Fire Capt. Jeff Carle went through his color slides and showed the video from Texas where the bees have claimed a third of the Lone Star State.

Carle talked of how thousands of agitated bees will attack a single target in defense of their hive, and how firefighters in full gear--with duct tape closing openings to their skin--must pull victims to safety.

Another fireman sighed a vulgarity, and a vial containing two Africanized honeybees was passed from one to another for inspection.

Slow but unstoppable, the bees are moving toward San Diego, California’s second-largest city and their first metropolitan stop in the state.

“Once the bees cross the Colorado River, they can be in downtown Los Angeles in a year,” said entomologist Bill Routhier of the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “A lot of people are thinking we still have time. You don’t.”

The bees heading this way are now in the Mexican state of Sonora, 170 miles south of the U.S. border. Given their 300-mile-a-year flight, they will be in Tucson by next year. Experts believe that one flank will veer west and follow the Gila River to the Colorado River near Yuma. Then they are expected to spread north and west, swarming across Imperial County, from one irrigation canal to the next, and into San Diego County.

And it is expected to happen in 1994, maybe sooner.

*

Within six months of the arrival in San Diego, authorities say, millions of people in Southern California will be exposed to the ravages of the Africanized honeybee, this hyperactive insect that was mistakenly released by a Brazilian beekeeper in 1957. It has wrought damage and hundreds of deaths along its path, multiplying from the initial 26 swarms to more than 2 million colonies today.

Now all those wisecracks about killer bees in South America, those visions of B-grade Hollywood horror films, are evolving into serious government talk about how to prepare for the bees when they enter Southern California.

San Diego County officials are looking to recruit and train volunteers to answer telephone hot lines, knowing that current personnel could not handle the kinds and number of calls the bees’ arrival will bring. In Texas, hot lines are handling 700 bee-related calls daily, and the number is increasing.

The San Diego Fire Department is training its officers and writing a bulletin for other public safety agencies on how to rescue victims from attacks by swarming bees. The method calls for knocking the bees down with high-pressure water sprays.

Service organizations are being asked to “adopt a school” by donating $50 or more to help pay for materials to educate children on how to avoid the bees and what to do if caught in a potentially deadly swarm.

Entomologists are plotting how far north these warm-climate Africanized bees might travel. Some say no farther than the Los Angeles Basin. Others paint a worst-picture scenario that finds the bees hugging the Pacific coastline to Vancouver, Canada, perhaps dying off in the cold of winter, only to be followed by new waves the ensuing spring.

Los Angeles County officials responsible for health, agriculture and fire safety are mapping their strategies in regular meetings.

Routhier, the Department of Food and Agriculture manager for San Diego and neighboring counties, wants to slam the door on the bees near the state line by luring them into tens of thousands of traps at a bottleneck along the Gila River in Arizona.

Still, “probably nothing will stop them,” Routhier said. “We’ll have to learn to live with them. The sooner we learn that, the better off we’ll be.”

San Diego County officials talk of preparing for the bees in much the same way they discuss preparing for the Big One. They use terms such as emergency preparedness, coordination, public education. And they try to avert panic.

“Panic isn’t appropriate,” said San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding, who chairs a task force on how to confront the Africanized honeybees’ arrival.

“In San Diego, we’ve accepted the fact we have poisonous, potentially deadly rattlesnakes in our back yards and canyons, and that when children go out to play, they need to watch for that. That’s going to have to be the same when the bees come.”

The Africanized honeybee is virtually undistinguishable from the docile European honeybee, which is common in the United States.

But a major difference is that the European bee, which is not easily angered, might only send a dozen bees on a stinging raid if its hive is upset or threatened within a few feet. The Africanized beehive, however, is sensitive to incursions within 30 or 40 feet, and will immediately send out thousands of bees in defense--and still more if the threat is not considered neutralized.

Moreover, after the first bee finds its target, it plants a banana-like scent on the victim to act as a beacon for the other raiders.

“You can walk away with 500 to 1,500 stings,” Routhier said. The healthiest of persons probably cannot survive 2,000 stings, he said, and for those whose allergies can cause major illness from a single bee sting, fear is justified.

Also unlike the European bee, which tends to nest in trees or under structural overhangs, the Africanized bee will make its home almost anywhere there is protection from rain and direct sunlight.

*

Taken alone, the foraging Africanized bee, making its rounds among flowers, is not considered dangerous. Even swarms of bees looking to establish new hives for their queens are not considered on the prowl for stinging targets.

But the established hive must be avoided.

“More than half of the stingings we’ve had are associated with mowing the lawn, weed whacking or the use of other motorized equipment. The noise and the vibration sets them off,” said Kathleen Davis, a spokesman for Texas A&M; University, which administers that state’s bee programs.

Once the hive is set into defensive attack, the advice is simple, Davis and others said: Run in zig-zag fashion for 200 yards or more, if necessary. The bees cannot keep up with a running person over long distances. If you can, cover your head as best as possible without blocking your vision, and try to find shelter in a house or vehicle.

So far in Texas, no one has been killed by these bees, which arrived in the border town of Hidalgo in October, 1990. But the incidence of bee encounters is rising markedly. From then until a month ago, about 35 stinging cases have been documented. But in the past month, an additional 65 cases or so were reported.

Death estimates in Central and South America range from 100 to 4,000.

Kathleen Thuner, San Diego County agricultural commissioner, said: “Ten years ago, government would have raised the tax and built a new empire to deal with a problem like this. Instead, we have to go after this piecemeal, and we recognize that the timeline is actually really short. We have two years to address both the fears and the reality.”