COLLEGE STATION -- Two counties today were added to the state quarantine restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees.
The addition of Hamilton and Taylor counties makes 109 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.
"We are beginning to see more bee activities because it is the spring of the year," said Jackson who oversees a series of traplines that are monitored across Texas. "And if we start getting some rain, we might pick up more bee activity. When flowers bloom, bees pick up and swarm. We may not have as much as usual this year because of the drought, but still bees get active as the weather warms."
A wild colony of bees was found on a tree about 7 miles west of Hamilton after one man was stung about 13 times and a dog was stung numerous times while being chased about 1,000 yards. A chainsaw apparently had alarmed the bees which were living nearby.
At a residence in Abilene, a swarm of bees was found under an overhang of a detached garage. No people or animals were reported stung in that case.
Bees from both sightings were collected and sent to Texas A&M's Honey Bee Identification Lab where they were confirmed as Africanized.
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, 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.