COLLEGE STATION -- Callahan County today was added to the state quarantine restricting the movement of commercial bee operations following the detection of Africanized honey bees there.
Texas now has 103 counties 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.
The bees were found in a wooden trunk in the garage of a home near Baird. No one was stung. Jackson said a sample analyzed by Texas A&M's honey bee identification lab was found to be Africanized.
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, 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, Hays, Henderson, Hidalgo, Hood, Hudspeth, Irion, Jackson, Jeff Davis, Jim Hogg, Jim Wells, Johnson, Karnes, 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, 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 TOP