Killer Bees on Board : Ship Docks in L.A. With Stowaway Swarm, but Officials Say Pests Were Sent Packing

Bee calm.

Yes, the first swarm of killer bees ever detected in Los Angeles County landed at the harbor last week. Yes, a bee or two could have escaped the 90 minutes of spraying by county officials. And yes, the body of the fearsome queen was not among those collected by the Department of Food and Agriculture after the port-side massacre, so there is an outside chance she survived.

But bee experts say it is unlikely that there is really a killer queen on the loose, or that there is any danger from the bees who hitchhiked into port on a Dutch freighter, which has sailed off to the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We feel at this time there’s no threat,” said Robert Donley, chief of the county Department of Agriculture’s environmental protection bureau. “We’re sure that 99.99% were killed,” said Donley, who did some of the spraying.

A queen on the loose in Southern California could mate with local bees to create a new killer bee colony. But even if the queen somehow escaped the ship, Donley said, “the chances for her survival would not be very good.”

Nevertheless, eight bee traps were put up around the docks as a precautionary measure. Experts have been preparing for a migration of killer bees, also known as Africanized honeybees, across the Arizona border, but this swarm came from overseas.

The Dutch cargo ship Ned Lloyd Van Dieman left Guatemala on July 7 with the swarm stowed away in a latch hole. The captain alerted U.S. agricultural officials that he had bees on board as he prepared to dock Tuesday.

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Two members of the Department of Food and Agriculture met the ship as it docked at Berth 136--fittingly, just off B Street in Wilmington. They suited up in protective garb, boarded and started spraying.

Donley said he was surprised at how mellow the bees were. “A few were flying around,” he said. “We were divebombed by a couple, but normal bees will do that.”

After 90 minutes of spraying, the bees were “drenched” and dead, Donley said. He and the county’s bee expert bagged several insects for examination. The remaining corpses were left in the latch hole on the boat because, Donley said, it was impossible to reach into the narrow space.

Donley said the assumption was that this was a swarm of ordinary European bees because of their docility. But the next day a county entomologist identified the bees as Africanized honeybees. On Thursday a state entomologist confirmed this identification, and the bee traps went up.

The queen was not among the bees taken, but Donley said he assumes she is among the corpses left in the latch hole. Queens usually sit in the middle of a swarm, so her body would be buried under those of other bees, Donley said.

The reason the bees did not get vicious, Donley said, was because they had no hive to protect. “They were just huddled down there,” Donley said.

If a few bees did escape, Donley said, they will not be dangerous on their own. And if the queen somehow escaped, she would not be able to fly very far, or even feed herself.

This is not the first time killer bees have hitchhiked into the country, Donley said. A swarm stowed away on a freighter that landed in San Francisco in January, 1992. And several southern states, including Texas and Louisiana, have reported stowaway killer bees.

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Although the Los Angeles area had not detected this mode of bee immigration before last week, experts say it may be happening all the time.

“The bottom line is if one ship came in with a swarm on it, there are probably five that go in undetected,” said Ron Neese, a member of the Western Apicultural Society, a group of beekeepers from western states.

But Neese said isolated swarms slipping into the country in boats pose little threat. It is large migrations, such as the one experts expect to hit the Los Angeles area in the fall, that could cause problems.

Even then, Neese said, it is easy to overestimate the dangers posed by killer bees. “The threat to us is minimal,” Neese said. “But it makes great copy.”