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Expert says African killer bees
arrive in U.S. within 2 years
By Jade Boyd
Reporter
In 1956 Dr. W.E. Kerr brought 26 African
honey bee queens to Brazil. He planned to cross
breed them with Brazil’s existing European bees
to produce a hybrid bee strain that would yield
more honey.
The next year most of these queens were acci
dentally released into the wild and, for a decade,
no one noticed the consequences.
But by the early ’70s researchers and beekeep
ers in Brazil realized that the bees were thriving
and seriously affecting the Brazilian honey crop.
The new bees also were extremely aggressive.
Killer bees had been released.
“He (Kerr) selected queens from African stock,
knowing that they were much more aggressive,”
said Dr. John Thomas, an entomologist with the
Texas Agricultural Extension Service. “He was
looking for a bee that would work longer hours
in the tropics.”
Thomas estimates the killer bees will arrive in
the United States from Mexico by late 1989 or
early 1990. Other estimates range from as early
as this year to as late as 1994. In Texas,
Brownsville is likely to witness the bees first be
cause of easy access from the coastal plains.
Thomas is one of 19 members of the Texas Af
ricanized Honey Bee Advisory Committee. Some
are from the Texas Department of Health; oth
ers represent the Texas Department of Parks
and Wildlife. Members of the Texas Farm Bu
reau and commercial beekeepers from the state
also sit on the committee.
The main goal of the committee is to educate
police, firefighters and beekeepers around the
state about the dangers killer bees present.
Thomas said the committee expects the worst
problems with killer bees in urban areas where
the bees are likely to come in contact with large
numbers of people.
“Once it has been confirmed that the bee is in
an area, respect bees,” Thomas said. “Don’t mess
with them. If you see some, report them.”
Honey bees are not native to North or South
America. However, several races of European
bees have thrived in the Western Hemisphere
since their introduction to the Colonies in 1621.
“In tests designed to measure the level of reac
tion to the alarm pheromone, they (African
honey bees) are 10 to 15 times more reactive than
| the European,” Thomas said.
Alarm pheromones are released when a hive is
| disturbed; they are a signal to the bees to protect
the hive from predators.
Thomas likened the Africans’ aggressive reac
tions to those of a red wasp or yellowjacket, but
because of the larger number of honey bees in a
hive, the danger is greater.
“If you disturb an African colony you’re going
to get 100 to 200 stings,” he said. “When you dis
turb a European, you may get two or three.”
In addition to being more aggressive, African
honey bees are more reproductive and more re
silient than European honey bees. In the 30 years
since their escape from captivity, killer bees have
spread from Sao Paulo, Brazil, throughout South
America. Their trek north has been confirmed in
the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.
“I know that there has been a proposal to es
tablish a bee regulated zone in Mexico at the Isth
mus of Tehuantepec,” Thomas said. “This was
an $18 million proposal. It was put together last
year and presented to Congress.”
In April, Congress asked for a revised propo
sal with a smaller budget, Thomas said.
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is between Vera
cruz and the Yucatan Peninsula. It is about 130
miles wide and seperates the Gulf of Mexico
from the Pacific Ocean.
“About a month ago I saw an altered proposal
which cut down the number of research efforts,
but essentially kept four (geographic) areas,”
Thomas said. “They selected the most likely
routes the bee would go through the Isthmus of
Tehuatepec and they concentrated their man
agement tactics in three areas, feeling that most
of the bees would have to go through these three
areas. Rather than setting up a barrier that was
about 100 miles wide across that whole land area,
they tried to speculate: If the bees come through,
where will they come through?”
Thomas said he expected the agreement to be
announced last Wednesday.
To date, Thomas knows of only two confirmed
reports of killer bees in the United States.
This April a hive was brought into Panama
City, Fla., on a South American freighter. The
hive was later destroyed.
In Kern County, Calif., in 1984, an African
hive arrived in a load of Venezuelan pipe and
went undiscovered for about one year. The state
of California declared the bees eradicated 12
months later. Twenty-two hives were destroyed
and while exact figures are not available, Thomas
estimates the state spent close to $1 million.
African honey bees are different from the Eu
ropean bees that domestic honey producers
raise. For centuries, honey producers have tried
to breed certain traits into tneir bees: gentleness,
high honey production and absence of swarm-
ing.
i Killer bees evolved in an extremely hostile Af
rican enviroment for thousands of years before
being transplanted to South America. Droughts,
deserts and a large number of predators made
survival for the bees very difficult.
“The only bees that came out of that kind of
environmental selection were bees that were ex
tremely mean,” Thomas said. “They convert
nearly all of their resources — nectar and pollen
— into brood (eggs and larvae). They have a ten
dency not to hoard honey and they won’t tolerate
large numbers (in the hive) because they swarm
so much.”
A swarm takes place when the queen that is in
the hive fertilizes a queen egg. Then the old
queen and about half of the bees in that hive
leave. Killer bees swarm six to 12 times more of
ten than domestic bees.
“The thing that has baffled many scientists
that have been down there (South and Central
America) is the fact that the African honey bee
has been able to keep itself isolated to the extent
that it has. It has maintained that mean charac
teristic while moving over the 2,800 to 3,000
miles that it has traveled from 1957 to 1987,”
Thomas said. “In that 30 years the bee has
changed very little.”
Recent studies of the mating habits of killer
bees answer some of these questions.
African drones, or males, mate longer hours
daily than do European drones. They may mate
with either African or European queens. When
they mate with European queens, the resulting
offspring is a hybrid, containing characteristics
of both races.
However, the mating flight of the African
a ueen occurs late in the day, after the European
rones have stopped flying. The probability of
an African queen mating with a European drone
is very remote, Thomas said.
When African bees move into an area, they
also affect European drone production, even
tually bringing it to a halt.
“Then, whenever either the Africans or the
Europeans produce virgin queens, they’ve only
got African males to mate with,” Thomas said.
“This was only determined in the last three or
four years.”
Armed with this information, experts hope to
have a chance to stop the killer bees in Mexico be
fore they reach the United States. Scientists are
genetically selecting and breeding large numbers
of late-flying European drones. They would then
release these drones in target areas.
“The idea basically is to have such a high pop
ulation of domestic drones that the probability of
either European or African queens mating with
African drones would be very remote,” he said.
A8tM researchers
work in Honduras
training farmers
By Patricia Carroll
Reporter
Acting somewhat like a minia
ture Peace Corps, a group of 15
Texas A&M faculty members and
A&M Agricultural Extension
Service personnel served two
weeks in Honduras as part of an
international agricultural devel
opment training group.
The program was awarded to
A&M through a Title XII
strengthening grant funded by
the U.S. government, said Euge
nia Floyd, a veterinary clinical as
sociate at A&M.
Before leaving for Honduras
on May 21, the group received
cross-cultural training on campus
which served as an overview of in
ternational project funding serv
ices and past international pro
grams.
Because of her interest in ani
mals, Floyd said, the Fondo Gan-
dero, or “cattle funding” project,
was most enjoyable.
“This was a cooperative pro
gram established to involve the
peasants in cattle production,”
she said.
Breeding farms are set up and
cattle are loaned to the peasants,
who may pay back the loans with
animals or with money made in
sales, she said.
“The purpose was to extend
livestock production among small
farmers,” she said.
Many more women’s programs
are being developed because in
the past most projects have been
aimed at male farmers, Floyd
said.
Among these programs was a
canning project that taught
women how to make jellies and
other canned goods and how to
market them, she said.
While in Honduras, one of the
biggest problems Floyd observed
was deforestation, she said.
“Small farmers practice a ‘slash
and burn’ type of agriculture,”
she said. “They cut down the for
est, plant for a couple of years
and then move on. This causes
terrible damage to the land.”
Floyd said a forestry school in
Honduras has been funded to
teach farmers a more sedentary
type of agriculture to help pre
serve the land.
The U.S. Agency for Interna
tional Development, (AID), is
funding a number of projects in
Honduras because of growing
concern for the country’s devel
opment, Floyd said.
“We chose Honduras because
it is a sort of hotbed for devel-
“I think all of us who went
have an expanded con
sciousness of what poten
tials really are for devel
oping countries. ”
— Eugenia Floyd, A&M
veterinary clinical
associate
opment right now and because of
the great variety of projects the
re,” she said.
Floyd’s goal, she said, is to
work on an international research
project in the field of cattle dis
ease. Floyd has a doctorate in vet
erinary medicine from the Uni
versity of Georgia and is working
on her Ph.D. in pathology at
A&M.
“You read about such devel
opment projects in the paper, but
the news is so select,” she said. “I
think all of us who went have an
expanded consciousness of what
potentials really are for devel
oping countries.”
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