Africanized Bees Have Settled In, Experts Say

They’ve been found as far north as Oxnard--where an unsuspecting landfill worker couldn’t lift a utility box lid because their hive was so large, and as far south as San Diego--the random catch by a net-wielding entomologist near an elementary school.

They’ve turned up in trees in Costa Mesa and Calabasas, among flowers in La Habra and Seal Beach, in a hay bale near Escondido, in house walls in Lawndale and Torrance, and they’ve invaded the nooks of so many homes around Palm Springs that bee remover Lance Davis can barely keep up with his customers’ frantic calls for help.

Africanized honeybees--the winged demons of B-movie fare--are now assumed to be so commonplace in Southern California that experts have stopped plotting their advance and consider the entire region south of Ventura County to be colonized.

And although their sensational nickname--killer bees--may be overstating their ferocity, they did kill an 83-year-old beekeeper in Long Beach in August--the sixth fatality in the United States since they first crossed the border from Mexico and entered Texas in 1990.

Experts warn that in this land of earthquakes, floods and fires, Southern California is becoming increasingly more threatened by the bees from Brazil.

And because water and food sources are most sparse this time of year, causing the bees to be more easily agitated, “this may be the most dangerous time of the year” for encountering them, warned Cal Kaminskas, the assistant agricultural commissioner for Riverside County.

Multiplying much faster than the more benign European honeybees, the Africanized bees are holing up in hives for the coming winter and are especially defensive in protecting their young broods and precious stores of honey, Kaminskas said.

Aside from the fatal Long Beach attack, six other people in Southern California have been stung by bees confirmed as Africanized, state officials report. The victims--including a horseback rider, a gardener and a farmer--were residents of San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties, where the bees are more established after first migrating into remote desert areas of California in 1994.

The relative paucity of attacks, experts say, belies what’s in store for the Southland. The bees began appearing in the metropolitan area about a year ago, and though they have so far lain relatively low, authorities say bee encounters are expected to climb dramatically in a year or two as the bees become more established.

Meanwhile, the anticipation makes any bee sighting a potentially high-anxiety event, as Manhattan Beach sun worshipers discovered Sunday. Firefighters abruptly closed the city’s popular pier after finding a swarm of 10,000 bees hovering at one end.

Beekeeper Don Sorensen--who was called in to capture the bees--said he believes that the insects were actually European honeybees and that he plans to release them later in a clover field near San Diego.

“We have to have lab analysis done to know for sure,” Sorensen said. He added, “As long as I didn’t get stung, they’re [European] honeybees.”

To the naked eye, Africanized bees look the same as European honeybees, and individually, their venom is no more potent. But the Africanized bees are more easily agitated, more defensive in reacting against perceived threats to their hives--such as the sound of a weed whacker or lawn mower--and will fly up to half a mile in pursuit of a target and sting in far greater numbers.

They are generally considered the greatest threat to people in open areas--such as in fields or equestrian trails--where there is no immediate place for a person to take shelter, and a particular threat to the elderly or infirm who cannot run away or may fall and become easy prey.

Their numbers will only grow. Africanized bees were imported to Brazil in 1956 to crossbreed with European bees to improve their tropical hardiness, but some escaped from a laboratory a year later and began their inexorable march north, through Central America and Mexico. Because the Africanized genes are dominant, the bees are conquering the feral European bee population as they crossbreed while flying north.

The only option, experts say, is to learn to live with them now that they have settled in.

“We wouldn’t be surprised to find them anywhere,” said John Hurley, the apiary inspector for the Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner. “We don’t even test bees anymore to see if they’re Africanized, because we assume they are.”

Some public agencies still examine bees in their own laboratories. Bob Saviskas, executive director of the sprawling Los Angeles County West Vector Control District, said samples of bees captured around Torrance and Lawndale show that 60% of them are Africanized. “People don’t normally notice them until there’s a problem,” he said.

But indeed, so many Africanized bees have been caught that officials have declared that the entire counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial are colonized. They’ve also been found in southern Ventura and eastern Kern counties, and state officials expect the bees, in time, will reach San Francisco.

Officials worry that Southland residents--long braced for their arrival--are already growing complacent to the threat, or are simply in denial that the bees may be in their midst.

For instance, though Africanized bees have been found in Garden Grove, officials at nearby Disneyland insist the bees haven’t shown up at their park.

“We do not have any Africanized bees at Disneyland,” spokesman Ray Gomez said confidently. “We have so much greenery, it’s likely we have bees--and if we have a problem with a hive near a guest traffic area, we’d either remove the hive or have an apiarist come out and take the bees away. But our experts have told us we haven’t had any Africanized bees.”

Asked how the experts know for sure, Gomez said, “Well, we haven’t had any bees behaving in a way you’d expect Africanized bees to behave. We haven’t had any incidents.”

Nick Nisson, Orange County’s head entomologist, says he assumes Africanized bees inhabit the entire county at this point.

Similarly, supervisors at Balboa Park in San Diego say they don’t believe any Africanized bees are present there. “We haven’t identified any yet,” said Steve Remley, who oversees the park’s pest management. “We’re trained to deal with them, but so far there have been no reports of problems.”

Yet San Diego County’s chief entomologist, David Kellum, said his department has simply stopped testing for Africanized bees because the entire county is considered to be colonized.

Other officials say they are playing it safe by assuming the worst.

“We treat any swarm of bees as if they’re Africanized,” said Andy Gallardo, spokesman for Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. “There’s no way to tell the difference, so we would treat them all the same way, by securing and restricting the area and notifying the Department of Agriculture for their instructions.”

So far, he said, there have been no signs of swarming bees.

Swarming bees are not themselves dangerous; they are simply leaving an overpopulated hive to establish a new one, and in flight they do not become agitated. But a swarm is a telltale sign that a hive is in the area, and another is about to be established. After the bees build a hive, they become hyper-defensive in protecting it.

Because European bees tend to swarm only in the spring, and Africanized bees swarm up to 10 times throughout the year, “if you see a swarm in the fall, you should assume it’s Africanized,” said Bill Routhier, an Africanized bee expert for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

It’s only a matter of good fortune, officials say, that for whatever reason--perhaps their numbers aren’t great enough yet--Africanized bees have not launched attacks from their urban hives.

The first fatal Southern California incident occurred in August, when 83-year-old beekeeper Virgil Foster of Long Beach was stung at least 50 times by Africanized bees. The bees had taken over one of his backyard hives and were provoked when he was mowing his yard and bumped into the hive.

Some of the bees pursued the paramedics as they rushed Foster to a hospital, according to the Long Beach Fire Department. The hive was destroyed.

Authorities face a ticklish dilemma in areas where the presence of Africanized bees has been confirmed through DNA testing: How to increase precautions without triggering alarm?

“It’s a fine line,” said Bob Jones, principal of Kumeyaay Elementary School in San Diego. In March, Kellum, the county’s entomologist, was participating in a regional bee sweep, and a bee that he randomly caught near some flowering ice plant across the street from the school proved to be Africanized. He assumed the hive was in a nearby canyon.

The challenge to Jones was how to alert his 520 students and their parents that a bee was found without causing undue anxiety--although the children knew something was up when the television news crews appeared.

In the wake of the discovery, the students have been shown a “bee alert” educational video. Brochures were distributed to staff and parents, and the children have been advised to high-tail it to a classroom and close the door tight if a bee attack occurs.

“We treat it like a fire drill,” he said. “If something happens, here’s what to do. The kids were very accepting.”

Fire departments throughout Southern California have long been trained in how to respond to a bee attack or how to destroy a swarm. The plan: Firefighters in their protective uniforms will establish a 300-foot perimeter, then spray water with a 1% mixture of soapy foam on the bees, suffocating them.

Los Angeles County Fire Department crews have responded to less than a dozen such calls, said department spokesman Henry Rodriguez.

In the thick of the bee battle is Lance Davis, whose company, Killer Bee Swarm Removal Inc., is swamped with calls around Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert, where the bees have been present for several years. His experience foretells what is in store for Southern California’s metropolitan areas in a year or two.

In 1998, Davis responded to 187 calls for bee removal; so far this year, he’s handled more than 430 requests. Among the most difficult: a hive so deep inside a fireplace that the mantel and stone face had to be removed to get access to the bees, and a hive near the weather vane high atop Desert Hospital in downtown Palm Springs.

One of his most recent calls came from Marion Foster, who was startled last Wednesday when a swarm of about 7,000 bees settled beneath a patio cover of her Palm Springs home. Because of the time of year, the swarm was assumed to be Africanized.

“I was scared to death,” she said. “I called the Fire Department and they referred me to the bee guy. . . . It was like a paramedic call.”

Most hives are built inside the walls of buildings, where the bees thrive in the cool darkness. Homeowners are advised to patrol their property monthly to look for bees passing through structural holes. Davis said he has opened up the walls of countless homes and found hives with as many as 80,000 bees inside, causing the human occupants some belated upset.

Davis doesn’t kill the bees, but cuts off the wings of the presumably African queen, and takes the hive to farmers in the Coachella Valley so the bees can be used for pollination.

He handles the bees without wearing a protective suit.

“It’s intimidating when you’re dealing with them right in your face,” he said. “You have to remain calm, which is very hard to do.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Here’s the Buzz

Africanized honeybees began their migration into California in 1994 and today most of Southern California is considered colonized. Most agencies have stopped their Africanized bee detection programs because the issue, they say, is moot: The bees are here.