Half of county's bees now 'killer' variety

By RYAN DAUGHERTY/Staff Writer

BARSTOW — Africanized honey bees, or “killer bees,” currently account for almost half of all bee colonies in the Inland Empire, a leading public health official said Friday.

Dr. J. Wakoli Wekesa, a vector ecologist for the San Bernardino County Vector Control Program, says the bees have proliferated like mad since first being spotted in the county in 1998 and now comprise 45 percent of all bee colonies here.

“They’ve actually taken over very very fast within three years,” Wekesa said. “They’re going to be here. We have to learn how to live with them and be good neighbors, and I think we can make that work.”

Africanized bees have been blamed for over 1,000 human deaths since a colony escaped from a Brazilian laboratory in 1956. They entered the United States in 1990 in Texas and were first sighted in California in 1994.

Their reputation for aggression is somewhat exaggerated, said John Gardner, chief deputy commissioner for the county Department of Agriculture.

“By and large the experience most people have with Africanized bees will be just the same as any other kind of bee they’ve met in their life. The only time they get dangerous is when you get near their nest — then they react like a property owner at tax time.”

In July 1998, Newberry Springs beekeeper Billy Decker did just that, logging the first reported “killer bee” attack in the annals of county vector control. Decker was stung more than 100 times.

Decker said in 26 years of beekeeping experience he had never seen such aggressive bees.

Wekesa said there were five killer bee attacks countywide last year, none fatal. Some of the more noteworthy: In August 2000, a Twentynine Palms woman was stung more than 400 times and a Hesperia man was stung more than 200 times. In June 2000, a swarm of killer bees attacked a group of hikers in Joshua Tree National Park, stinging one man more than 100 times.

Only one attack has been reported this year. In March a San Bernardino man and his dog were each stung several times, Wekesa said.

Why are they so mean?

“Just genetics,” Wekesa said. “It’s part of their behavior ... they defend their hives more aggressively than European bees.”

The bees, which are becoming more active as spring arrives, are severely annoyed by loud noises or heavy vibrations close to their hives, he said.

If attacked, “Run away fast, because they do not relent,” Wekesa said. “But go at least a quarter mile and they should leave you alone.”

For concerns about the presence of killer bees, contact County Vector Control at (909) 388-4600 or (800) 442-2283.

http://www.desertdispatch.com/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid987298509,92983,

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 14, 2001

Answers

Killer Bees Just Get Meaner

Drought killed off 'mellower' colonies

Candus Thomson, Baltimore Sun Sunday, April 15, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/15/MN164179.DTL

Tucson -- From under logs, behind water meters and in the eaves of houses, they're swarming, mad as hell after two years of drought and not going to take it anymore.

Africanized "killer" bees are having a coming-out party this spring, making their presence felt from the Mexican border to the Grand Canyon.

"Big time," says Justin Schmidt, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "I'm getting buckets of them."

Fire departments in the state's largest cities are being called out a half- dozen times each day to ward off attacks with chemical foam and treat victims.

At AAA Africanized Bee Removal Specialists, exterminators are working from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. to answer the more than 300 calls coming in daily to the company's four offices.

"This is an epidemic we're having," says owner Tom Martin in an office that's ringing like the set of the Jerry Lewis Telethon. "Every one of these colonies is a time bomb."

A bomb, he says, with a hair trigger.

Two seasons without significant rain killed off many weaker bees, leaving just the meanest of the mean. Heavy winter rains caused desert plants to bloom early, providing food for bees with a bad attitude and hellbent on colonization.

"It left us with a super Africanized bee," says Martin, a former federal bee researcher and commercial beekeeper. "The stronger the colony, the more aggressive the bees are in defending their nest."

Like John Belushi's black-and-yellow-clad thug snarling, "your pollen or your wife," the real killer bees are wreaking havoc in suburban communities, breaking up golf games, family picnics and school recesses.

It isn't the sting that makes an encounter with the bees so memorable, it is the number of stings, experts say.

Unlike a European honey bee colony, which may dispatch a team of 100 or so defenders, the Africanized colony will send out 10,000 to 25,000. The swarm engulfs the head of an unsuspecting interloper, zeroing in on the nose and lips, says Dr. Eric Erickson, director of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center.

"It's your breath that offends them," he says.

The bees are responsible for 1,000 human deaths in North America, eight of them in the United States. An unknown number of animals have died in attacks.

Ironically, Africanized bees "are bees as nature intended them," says Erickson. Centuries of cultivation by European beekeepers created the docile honey bees familiar to Americans.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 10

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 17, 2001.