Aug. 16, 2001

COLLEGE STATION – Harris County was added Thursday to the state quarantine, restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees.

The addition makes 137 counties in Texas now quarantined for Africanized honey bees, according to Paul Jackson, chief inspector for the Texas Apiary Inspection Service, a unit of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

A sample of bees taken from a 55-gallon barrel was analyzed and found to be Africanized. The barrel, at 9444 Ronda Lane in Houston, was disturbed July 27 when Johnny Money was mowing weeds there. He was stung as many as 60 times, Jackson said, but recovered after receiving medical care.

"The sample was later sent to the Honey Bee Identification Lab at Texas," Jackson said, "and the followup investigation concluded Aug. 14 that Harris County should be quarantined."

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.

State bee inspectors continue to monitor a series of bee traplines that extend across the state from Louisiana to New Mexico.

The Africanized bee was first detected in the United States near Brownsville in October 1990. Since then, the bee has spread through much of the state, along a line roughly from south of Houston to Lubbock to El Paso. Africanized honey bees also have been found in Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico.

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, Colorado, Comanche, Coryell, Comal, Crane, Crockett, Culberson, Dallas, Dawson, De Witt, Dimmit, Duval, Ector, Edwards, Ellis, El Paso, Erath, Falls, Fayette, Fisher, Fort Bend, Frio, Gaines, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Hamilton, Harris, Haskell, Hays, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, Hockley, Hood, Hudspeth, Irion, Jackson, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Jones, Karnes, Kendall, Kenedy, Kerr, Kimble, King, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, Lampasas, La Salle, Lavaca, Lee, Liberty, Limestone, Live Oak, Lubbock, Martin, Mason, Matagorda, Maverick, McCulloch, McLennan, McMullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Navarro, Nolan, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Real, Refugio, Runnels, San Patricio, Scurry, Schleicher, Shackelford, Somervell, Starr, Stephens, Sterling, Sutton, Tarrant, Taylor, Terrell, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Travis, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Victoria, Ward, Washington, Webb, Wharton, Willacy, Williamson, Wilson, Zapata and Zavala.

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