Oct. 6, 2003

CENTERVILLE -- Leon County was added today to the state quarantine, restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees.

The addition makes 149 counties in Texas now quarantined for Africanized honey bees, according to the Texas Apiary Inspection Service, a unit of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

A sample from a colony of bees in a trap box was sent to the Texas Honey Bee Identification Lab in College Station, according to Paul Jackson, chief apiary inspector. All of the bees were destroyed.

Jackson said TAIS no longer operates a statewide trapline because more than half of the counties have been quarantined since the program began in 1990. The quarantine allows beekeepers to move beehives within, but not out of, the zone in an effort to prevent assisting the spread.

"Instead of the trapline, we have trap boxes in designated areas," Jackson said. "We rotate or move boxes depending on need or concern of people in areas where Africanized honey bees have not yet been found."

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.

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