Sept. 2, 2004

COLLEGE STATION – Dickens and Garza counties were added today to the state quarantine, restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees.

The addition makes 154 counties in Texas now quarantined for Africanized honey bees, according to the Texas Apiary Inspection Service, a unit of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

Samples of wild bees collected from both locations were sent to the Texas Honey Bee Identification Lab in College Station and confirmed Thursday, according to Paul Jackson, chief apiary inspector. All of the bees were destroyed in both cases.

In Dickens County, the bees were found in a water meter near where a tractor and shredder had been used to mow. Jackson said one person was stung more than 100 times, but received medical treatment and recovered.

In Garza County, the bees were a swarm – a group of bees traveling in search of a place to build a new home – that landed west of Post. No one was reported stung in that incident.

Jackson said the quarantine allows beekeepers to move beehives within, but not out of, the zone in an effort to prevent assisting the spread.

Africanized honey bees look just like regular domestic honey bees but are more defensive in protecting their hives, according to Jackson.

The Africanized bee was first detected in the United States near Brownsville in October 1990. Africanized honey bees also have been found in Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico.

Other counties included in the quarantine are: Aransas, Atascosa, Austin, Bandera, Bastrop, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Borden, Bosque, Brazoria, Brazos, Brewster, Brooks, Brown, Burleson, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Cochran, Coleman, Colorado, Comanche, Concho, Coryell, Comal, Cottle, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Culberson, Dallas, Dawson, De Witt, Dimmit, Duval, Eastland, Ector, Edwards, Ellis, El Paso, Erath, Falls, Fayette, Fisher, Fort Bend, Frio, Gaines, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Gregg, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hamilton, Harris, Harrison, Haskell, Hays, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, Hockley, Hood, Hudspeth, Irion, Jackson, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Jones, Karnes, Kaufman, Kendall, Kenedy, Kerr, Kimble, King, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, Lampasas, La Salle, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Limestone, Live Oak, Llano, Lubbock, Martin, Mason, Matagorda, Maverick, McCulloch, McLennan, McMullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Montgomery, Navarro, Nolan, Nueces, Parker, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Real, Refugio, Reeves, Robertson, Runnels, San Jacinto, San Patricio, Scurry, Schleicher, Shackelford, Somervell, Starr, Stephens, Sterling, Sutton, Tarrant, Taylor, Terrell, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Travis, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wharton, Willacy, Williamson, Wilson, Young, Zapata and Zavala.

For information about honey bees on the Web, try http://honeybee.tamu.edu/