MERIDIAN -- Bosque, Hill and Somervell counties have been added to the state quarantine restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees in Bosque County.
The addition makes 113 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 wild colony of bees was found in an oak tree near a house about 6 miles north of Meridian and 2 miles east of the Bosque River. A minor stinging incident was reported in connection with the bee hive there. Jackson said the stinging victim recovered fully
Bees were collected and sent to Texas A&M's Honey Bee Identification Lab where they were confirmed as Africanized. Hill and Somervell counties were added even though no bees have been found there, Jackson explained, because those two counties became surrounded by quarantined counties with the addition of Bosque County. He said it is likely that Africanized honey bees are in those counties, but none have been found and identified.
Jackson said this is the time of year that honeybees are active and more likely to be seen.
State bee inspectors continue to monitor a series of bee traplines that extend across the state from Louisiana to New Mexico, Jackson noted. The Africanized bee was first detected entering 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 south of Lubbock to El Paso. Africanized honey bees also have been found in Arizona, California and New Mexico. The quarantine allows beekeepers to move bee hives 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.
Counties included in the quarantine are: Aransas, Atascosa, Austin, Bandera, Bastrop, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Brewster, Brooks, Brown, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Colorado, Coryell, Comal, Crane, Crockett, Culberson, Dawson, De Witt, Dimmit, Duval, Ector, Edwards, Ellis, El Paso, Erath, Falls, Fayette, Fisher, Fort Bend, Frio, Gaines, Gillespie, Glasscock, Goliad, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Hamilton, Haskell, Hays, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hood, Hudspeth, Irion, Jackson, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Karnes, Kendall, Kenedy, Kerr, Kimble, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, La Salle, Lavaca, Limestone, Live Oak, Martin, Matagorda, Maverick, McCulloch, McLennan, McMullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Navarro, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Real, Refugio, Runnels, San Patricio, Shackelford, Schleicher, Starr, Stephens, Sutton, 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.