COLLEGE STATION -- Borden and Nolan counties have been added to the state quarantine restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees there.
The addition makes 119 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.
Bees were collected in Borden County from tree at the York Family Cemetery 13 miles east of Gail. One man was stung six times in that incident, but was not seriously injured. In Nolan County, a wild colony was found outside of a building 7 miles southwest of Roscoe. No one was reported stung in this case.
"Samples from both of the locations were collected and sent to Texas A&M's Honey Bee Identification Lab where they were confirmed as Africanized," Jackson said. "Apiary inspectors were sent to both locations to investigate the circumstances to determine whether the Africanized honey bees had gotten to those counties through natural migration or through some type of human-assisted action."
In both cases, it was determined that the bees had arrived on their own, Jackson explained, so the counties were quarantined.
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, Brewster, Brooks, Brown, Burnet, Caldwell, Calhoun, Callahan, Cameron, Colorado, Comanche, 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, Jones, Karnes, Kendall, Kenedy, Kerr, Kimble, Kinney, Kleberg, Knox, Lampasas, La Salle, Lavaca, Limestone, Live Oak, Martin, Matagorda, Maverick, McCulloch, McLennan, McMullen, Medina, Menard, Midland, Milam, Navarro, Nolan, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Real, Refugio, Runnels, San Patricio, Scurry, 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.