The first swarm of Africanized honey bees will buzz north across the Rio Grande any day now, but scientists say the worst sting of the "killer bees" may be the economic impact on agriculture and beekeeping.
Researchers predict the bees probably will enter the United States near the border city of Brownsville. In November, they were spotted 150 miles south of the border at Soto la Marina, Mexico, near the Gulf Coast.None has been found near the border since, but their advance accelerates as spring flowers provide food, said Anita Collins, head researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Honey Bee Research Lab at Weslaco.
These bees, descended from a tough African strain, have been spreading across South and Central America and Mexico since they escaped from a now-infamous Brazilian research program in 1957. Along the way they've killed an estimated 600 people, mostly in tropical South America, to earn their ominous nickname.
An Africanized bee's sting is no worse than a European bee's, but they were tagged "killers" because they tend to protect their colonies at the slightest disturbance, sending hundreds or thousands of defenders against intruders.
Africanized bees abscond from hives to form new colonies more regularly than the European honey bees commonly used in the Americas for pollinating crops and producing honey.
The difficulty of managing Africanized bees eventually will cost U.S. beekeepers $29 million to $58 million a year, the USDA estimates.
Africanized bees also are expected to reduce bee-pollinated crop production by 5 percent to 10 percent, costing farmers more than $40 million a year. Bee pollination adds nearly $800 million in value, it is estimated, to U.S. crops each year.
U.S. residents along the border aren't likely to notice much change, beyond seeing more wild colonies and swarms of bees looking for nest sites, said Collins, who has studied the Africanized bees for 14 years.
"They'll see bees . . . much more frequently than they're used to," she said. Some danger remains, she said, noting that in Venezuela a swarm chased her and other scientists to a truck about 100 yards away.
Researchers are monitoring 318 bee traps in southern Texas, as far west as Del Rio and as far north as the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge north of Corpus Christi, to track the bees' movement. There are 60,000 traps in Mexico.
Scientists will keep an eye on southern Texas and northern Mexico and destroy as many Africanized swarms as possible to slow their progress and buy time for research, Collins said.
No one knows how far north the bees will spread before the cold stops their expansion. In the Southern Hemisphere, they have not moved south of 32 degrees latitude, which north of the equator would mean Central Texas. The bees travel 250 to 350 miles a year, Collins said.