MASON – Mason County was added Monday to the state quarantine, restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees there after a major stinging incident.
The addition makes 129 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 colony of wild bees was found in a dead log about 15 miles southeast of Mason along the Llano River. C.H. Smith, who had been operating a bulldozer that apparently disturbed the log, was stung hundreds of times. Jackson said Smith has recovered from the attack.
"A sample was collected and taken to Texas A&M's Honey Bee Identification Lab, where it was confirmed as Africanized," Jackson said.
He noted the original sample received by the lab in mid-October was too small to get an accurate reading. Therefore, inspectors went to the location to obtain a larger number of bees which were later confirmed as Africanized.
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.
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.
Counties included in the quarantine are: Aransas, Atascosa, Austin, Bandera, Bastrop, Bee, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Borden, Bosque, Brewster, Brooks, Brown, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, 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, Haskell, Hays, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hill, 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, Liberty, Limestone, Live Oak, 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.