Tracking an Ill-Tempered Invader

In helmets, veils and heavy-gauge cotton coveralls, they trudged across the cracked earth of the San Joaquin Valley seeking the killers. Some of the searchers took to the air, combing an area of 400 sq. mi. by helicopter. The enemy sought by the scientific task force was as dangerous as it was tiny: ill-tempered, Africanized killer bees that may have landed in central California, jeopardizing crops and perhaps lives.

After the discovery in June of a killer colony in an oil field in south-central California, the state was buzzing with talk of the aggressive bees, which tend to attack humans and wildlife in swarms. Since the bees pose a potential threat to California's $55 million-a-year bee industry, the state's department of food and agriculture announced last week that it would carry out a search-and-destroy mission for all wild bees within a ten-mile radius of the killer nest. Scientists will also inspect the 9,200 commercial hives in the 97 apiaries in a 400-sq.-mi. quarantine area for the possible presence of Africanized bees.

Scientists so far have not located any new invaders, and a panel of experts suggested that the killer bees' aggressively unfriendly personalities will be blunted as they mate with more docile domestic bees. There is no doubt that the Africanized bees, known as Apis mellifera scutellata, have exceptionally nasty tempers. While they are slightly smaller and no more venomous than their European cousins, they go out of their way to attack, and they do so in overwhelming swarms. Ever since a batch of imported Africanized bees was accidentally released near Sao Paulo by a Brazilian scientist in 1957, they have been buzzing northward at a rate of more than 200 miles a year. They have killed thousands of animals and some 150 people during their migration. They entered Honduras about half a year ago and were spotted in El Salvador in June. At this rate the bees could reach the U.S. border as early as 1988. Some scientists have stirred controversy by recommending a 20-mile-wide "bee-free" zone in Mexico to prevent the swarms from descending on the U.S.

The bees alarm both the bee industry and the agricultural community. In California, 21 fruit and nut crops and 20 vegetable crops, valued at about $2 billion, depend upon commercial hives for pollination. An apiary infested by the Africanized variety is much more difficult to handle and produces far less honey since these bees greedily consume most of it themselves.

In recent years killer bees have been discovered in the U.S. on six occasions, most after hitching rides on cargo ships from Latin America. A swarm was uncovered last year on a ship in Cleveland. Several colonies have been discovered on ships in Texas; on one, the cook was using the bees for honey.

Some scientists see the scare as a sneak preview of what could be the worst infestation since the medfly plague in 1980-82. "You have to beat down the stories that generate the scary movies," says Honeybee Specialist Orley Taylor of the University of Kansas, who was in California as an adviser. "But you also have to make people aware that you have something that is economically and biologically extremely difficult to handle."