COLLEGE STATION -- Four counties today were added to the state quarantine restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees.
Blanco, Kendall, Throckmorton and Haskell counties make 107 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.
Jackson noted that no bees actually were found in Kendall County, but it was quarantined because the positive identification of Africanized bees in Blanco County meant that Kendall County was completely surrounded by quarantined counties. Jackson said it can be assumed that the Africanized bees are in Kendall County therefore, but that none have actually been identified in the area yet.
Jackson said samples from the finds in Blanco, Haskell and Throckmorton counties were analyzed by Texas A&M's honey bee identification lab and found to be Africanized. In all cases, the hives were destroyed.
A swarm of bees were found three miles southwest of Blanco when a dog was stung. Jackson said the dog had been tied, but was set free after the stinging began. The dog ran but later returned and was stung to death.
In Haskell County, about 1.5 miles west of Rochester, a wild colony of bees was found in the gas tank of an old truck. Jackson said there was a minor stinging incident of people around the area, but none was serious and everyone has recovered.
About 26 miles north of Albany in Throckmorton County, a wild swarm was found in an old building near the ground. No one was stung in this case, he said.
Jackson said Africanized bees tend to move about throughout the year, but all bees become much more active in the spring and fall.
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 the 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, 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, 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/
ENTO