Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990 TAG: 9005030491
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Killer bees, actually a fiercer strain of the ordinary honeybee, have been making their way northward from South America since the 1950s. The bees are now about 150 miles from the Texas border and are expected to cross it this year, Virginia Tech insect expert Richard Fell said.
"We fully expect they will spread eastward along the Gulf Coast states, down into Florida and then up through Georgia and the Carolinas," Fell said. If the bees continue at their current pace they would reach Virginia in several years, he said.
Texas A&M University bee expert John Thomas has predicted killer bees will inhabit all of Virginia within eight years.
But small numbers of the bees could reach Virginia quite quickly by piggybacking on trucks, Fell said. "We do know bees hitchhike," he said.
Also, most of the queen bees imported to Virginia come from Gulf Coast states. If killer bees invade hives there, Virginia beekeepers could unwittingly import the more aggressive strain.
The state has mustered a militia of scientists and state Agriculture Department experts to map a battle plan. Fell said he and other experts hope to devise ways of stemming the bees' invasion of commercial honeybee hives.
There is little scientists can do to slow the bees' spread in the wild, he said.
Virginia farmers must be prepared for changes in crop management, Fell said. Killer bees interfere with the domesticated European honeybee's main job: pollinating crops and flowers.
"In Virginia we have large numbers of vegetable crops that are pollinated by bees," particularly on the Eastern Shore, where Fell predicts the killer bees will concentrate. Killer bees resist domestication and movement from farm to farm, both necessities in commercial beekeeping.
Economic losses to United States beekeepers from killer bees could total $58 million annually, according to a federal Department of Agriculture study.
There is a chance the bees may not take hold at all in Virginia, Fell said. "It might be too cold. There is research that shows they would be able to take the winters here, but we just don't know how far north they will go."
The bees might migrate north and south through the coastal regions of Virginia and the Carolinas according to the temperature, Fell said.
The bees were originally brought to South America from Africa in hopes of increasing honey production. Instead, the bees overtook hives of more docile European honeybees.
Fell predicts many casual beekeepers in the U.S. will abandon the hobby if invaded by killer bees. "It's just no fun to manage a hive if every time you go in you're going to get stung."
People and livestock have died from killer bee attacks, Fell said. "If you disturbed a hive of wild honeybees, maybe 100 bees might respond and chase you for a little bit. But if you disturbed a nest of killer bees, thousands of bees would respond and pursue you quite aggressively. The difference is between a few stings and hundreds of stings."
Efforts to slow the bees' progress in Central American and Mexico have had little success, Fell said. And the bees have so far foiled attempts to dilute their aggressive nature through breeding. "They just sort of take over."
U.S. agriculture officials will kill individual hives overrun by the combative bees, Fell said. Fullscale eradication efforts are not practical, for environmental and cost reasons, Fell and Texas A&M's Thomas said.
"This bee . . . simply has a temper, or a personality problem, and people need to recognize that. It's no different that learning to live with rattlesnakes," Thomas said.
by CNB