Africanized Bees Confirmed in 4 County Cities

After years of lurid warnings, the news comes almost as an anticlimax: So-called killer bees have finally been sighted in Orange County, agriculture officials said Tuesday.

Properly known as Africanized honeybees, the Brazilian-bred insect has been infiltrating the region for years and is becoming well established in surrounding counties.

Now, genetic analysis of bees sampled in four cities--Seal Beach, Garden Grove, La Palma and Costa Mesa--has turned up the Africanized bees in Orange County as well, county Agricultural Commissioner Richard Le Feuvre said.

“We’ve been expecting them for a number of years, so it’s no real surprise,” Le Feuvre said. “It’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to have to live with it.”

The news--announced at a bee task force meeting Tuesday in San Diego--comes just a few months after discovery of another invasive, stinging pest in Orange County: the red imported fire ant.

“Unfortunately, Orange County residents are becoming too familiar with these types of pests,” said Oscar Hidalgo, a spokesman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Media reports have long warned of the approach of the so-called killer bees, which steadily migrated north from Brazil in the 1950s, crossing from Arizona into California’s Imperial County several years ago.

After sightings in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, in recent months the bees have become well established in Los Angeles County. They have been found in cities ranging from Corona to Rancho Palos Verdes, West Covina and Calabasas.

For five years, Orange County’s Vector Control District has been on the lookout for Africanized bees by randomly sampling bees found in areas throughout the county.

The four cities where bees were found in sampling this month were among 26 areas countywide where samples of five bees were taken. None of the bees had been swarming or stinging victims.

Africanized bees are more aggressive than their European counterparts and have attacked people, usually when guarding their nests, entomologists said.

But experts caution residents not to worry unduly.

“Africanized bees have been in Texas since 1990,” said UC Riverside entomologist Rick Vetter. “You ask them how it’s changed their lives, [and] they say it hasn’t.”

In fact, since 1990 only five people in the United States have been killed by the bees. “They’re high profile, low risk,” Vetter said.

Africanized bees take up residence in cavities in trees and rocks, but in neighborhoods, they like living between studs and walls in homes, in garages and outbuildings as well as among fences, old tires and abandoned cars, experts said.

The bees form swarms when they leave colonies looking for a new home, experts said. But such swarming bees are generally docile, said Vetter, who recently stuck his fingers “right into the middle of an Africanized bee swarm” while taking photographs on the UC Riverside campus. The result: “No stings.”

He describes the bees not as aggressive but as defensive of their nests.

“Considering all the things we do in California, this is just another thing that will add some to the potential dangers of living in L.A.,” Vetter said. “But driving on the freeway is much more dangerous.”

More information about the Africanized bee can be found on the state Department of Food and Agriculture Web site, https://www.cdfa.ca.gov.