Ant Stowaways Stymie Farms Needing Bees

It all seemed so innocent. California almond blossoms needed pollinating, so Texas beekeeper Mark Brady loaded 512 hives on a flatbed truck and sent them westward.

But then California inspectors found suspicious-looking insects on the truck. The bees would be marooned in Blythe for eight days earlier this month, victims of the state’s latest insect villain: the much-feared red fire ant.

The truckload of hives, each carrying an estimated 25,000 bees, sat on an unused airstrip while thousands of bees died. Brady battled by telephone with the state Department of Food and Agriculture, which he says threatened to gas all the bees to kill the ants. Arizona balked at the notion of taking the bees back. Utah closed its borders to the bees. Truckers passed along word on their radios, giving Brady’s hostage hives folklore status along the interstates of the Southwest.

Like the now-legendary homeless garbage barge, Brady’s beehives illustrate the pitfalls facing farmers, beekeepers and government officials when a new invasive pest like the fire ant heads their way.

With California’s fire-ant worries heightened by the discovery that Orange County is infested with the pest, even beekeepers in far-off states like Texas are feeling the effects.

In the end, Brady’s beehives and their fire-ant companions were allowed out of Blythe, with California and Arizona providing special escorts. The bees made it home safely to Waxahachie, Texas.

But Brady estimates he lost $40,000 or more during the eight-day adventure, vowing that he and his beekeeper colleagues aren’t about to send more bees to California. He has nothing good to say about state agriculture officials who, he said, seemed unprepared for dealing with fire ants.

“Nobody there could make a decision. We went back and forth, back and forth,” Brady said. “The way it was handled, it was a joke. It just was not right.”

In response, a California agriculture spokesman says the fire ant poses such a threat that officials had no choice but to halt Brady at the border.

“We sympathize, but we can’t sympathize enough to let him through,” spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said. The state’s fire-ant policy is “zero tolerance, at this point.”

Fire ants are South American natives that hitchhiked into the United States in the 1920s, infesting 10 Southeastern states and Texas. They are widely despised because their fiery sting can injure livestock and wildlife, and can prove fatal to those few people who are allergic to their venom.

Only recently has the ant been found in substantial numbers on the West Coast, with the largest infestation discovered in October in Orange County. A countywide quarantine was imposed early this month, and state officials are considering an ambitious attempt to eradicate the pest with aerial application of a growth-inhibiting pesticide. Their hope: that California can return to being a state free of fire ants.

A much smaller and little-known infestation occurred two years ago in the almond orchards of the Central Valley. Fire ants arrived in soil caked on pallets underneath bee hives brought from Texas. In time, the pests were found in orchards in Kern, Fresno and Stanislaus counties.

That discovery has caused headaches for California’s almond growers who depend on millions and millions of honeybees to pollinate the wealth of pink-white blossoms that covers their trees each February.

The state has more than 400,000 acres of almond-producing orchards, a sizable increase over recent years. “It’s a very popular commodity,” said Mark Looker, spokesman for the Almond Board of California.

Indeed, the demand far outstrips the number of honeybees in California, requiring the annual importation of 400,000 to 500,000 beehives to stock the orchards, said Joe Traynor of Bakersfield, a well-known “bee broker” who contracts with beekeepers and almond growers. Roughly 50,000 of those hives, Traynor said, traditionally come from Texas.

Now, California’s stepped-up efforts to ward off the fire ant are worrying some out-of-state beekeepers who depend on the income they receive from almond growers.

“Some beekeepers have opted not to come to California, because they were scared of the rules,” Traynor said.

Ironically, the sought-after honeybees have something in common with fire ants: Neither is native to the United States. Colonists imported honeybees from Europe in the 1600s to produce beeswax for church candles and honey for sweetening, said Eric Mussen, Cooperative Extension apiculturist, or honeybee specialist, at the UC Davis department of entomology.

But unlike the stinging ants, honeybees have become key players in American agriculture, including the 450,000 to 500,000 acres of California almond orchards. And for the shrinking number of beekeepers, those orchards provide important revenue.

“Honey prices have really bottomed out, and we needed the income,” said Brady, who has been sending beehives to California for the past three years. He hoped to earn $45,000 this year from sending four truckloads with 500 hives each. Instead, only one load made it to the orchards, another load was stopped in Blythe, and he chose not to send two others.

He insists he cleaned the hive pallets thoroughly before they left Texas.

“But fire ants, they’re like mice: They can be there, and you don’t see them,” Brady said.

His account of the number of ants on his load differs from that of state agriculture officials. When the waylaid truck returned to Texas, a licensed entomologist inspected the hives and found only two pallets infested with ants, including a queen as well as some workers and males. Queen fire ants are most feared by agriculture officials, since they reproduce and create new colonies.

California officials tell a different story. Inspectors pulled four pallets off Brady’s truck, finding queens on all four, Hidalgo said.

“Immediately, we said, we’re batting a thousand,” Hidalgo said. “That’s enough for us to say we have a serious infestation.”

What ensued was a torturous tangle of negotiations and dead ends. Brady recalls exhaustive phone conversations with California officials who, he said, kept giving him too-short deadlines and threatening to gas his bees. He worried how his bees were faring on the marooned truck in Blythe.

“I kept telling him those bees are going to die,” Brady said. He credits a California beekeeper for stepping in and providing his bees with much-needed water and care. Even so, he estimates that one-third to one-half of his bees perished.

But California agriculture officials did all they could to help Brady’s bees, Hidalgo said. He recalls that they sought permission from Arizona to allow the bees to travel back to Texas, only to receive an Arizona directive Feb. 1 that the bees could not pass through the state. Nevada would allow the bees in, but Utah would not, trapping the bees in Blythe, Hidalgo said.

Finally a compromise was struck. Brady flew to Phoenix, drove to Blythe and loaded the beehives onto a refrigerator truck. Arizona officials agreed to allow the truck to pass through on Interstate 40, where colder temperatures could prove fatal to any fire ants that fell from the truck. Finally, on Feb. 4, the bees left Blythe.

The incident prompted Arizona to institute stricter rules for beehives that went into effect Feb. 8, requiring all beehives from known fire-ant infestation areas to be inspected and certified free of fire ants.

“Honestly, we didn’t realize the beehives might be carrying colonies of red imported fire ants,” Arizona agriculture spokesman Lloyd Brown said.

To date, the fire-ant problem does not appear to be causing a bee shortage in the almond orchards, where blossoms are due to open within a few days. But some growers are wary.

“If we can’t acquire bees from the quarantine states, there could be a problem,” said James Burford, a manager at Burford Ranch in Kerman in Fresno County. Besides, he said, “I like the bees coming in from Texas. They’re real good bees.”

* FIRE ANTS: See how a colony gets established and what makes these insects potentially dangerous. B2

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Hitchhiking Fire Ants

Red fire ants are hitching their way into California aboard an unlikely cargo: pallets holding bee hives needed to pollinate the state’s almond orchards. But while almond growers need bees to pollinate their trees, no one is welcoming the fire ant.

Both the fire ants and honey bees are immigrants. Europeans brought bees to North America centuries ago, while the fire ant arrived in the Southeast from South America in the 1920s.

Source: UC Davis