What is an Africanized bee?
• Similar appearance as European bee, but swarms much more frequently than other honey bees. The colony may either be managed or wild. The bee hive may swarm as often as every six weeks and can produce a couple of separate swarms each time.
• Africanized honey bees do not fly out in angry swarms to randomly attack. However, they can become highly defensive in order to protect their hive, or home. It is now better to consistently exercise caution with respect to all bee activity. Keep your distance from any swarm of bees.
• The Africanized Honey Bee is far less selective about what it calls home, and occupy a much smaller space than the European bee. Known nesting locations include water meter boxes, metal utility poles, cement blocks, junk piles, and house eaves. Other potential nesting sites include overturned flower pots, old tires, mobile home skirts, and abandoned structures. Holes in the ground and tree limbs, mail boxes — even an empty soda pop can — could be viewed as “home” to an Africanized bee.
• The bees are extremely protective of hive and brood. The AHB’s definition of their “home turf” is also much larger than the European honey bee. Allow ample physical distance between the hive. At least 100 feet, or the width of a four-lane highway, is a good distance. If you see a bee hive, start moving away immediately.
Source: USDA
Honey bees similar to Africanized — or killer — bees have slipped into Ohio in recent years, raising concerns over whether the public is protected against the type of aggressive bees that have infested some southern states.
Migratory beekeepers often move about the country, delivering managed hives that help with plant pollination. A truck from Florida transported hundreds of these hives to Shelby County in 2013, including one found to contain bees with Africanized genes.
Those bees are gone but Ohio beekeepers remain fiercely concerned that potentially dangerous bees can be brought into the state without inspectors even knowing where they are.
This story of honey bee hives with confirmed Africanized genes in Ohio has until now been known to only a few. The state Department of Agriculture didn’t issue a statement to the public.
But the problem overall is the talk of Ohio’s beekeeper industry. There’s even an insider term for them — ‘hot hives.”
Documents obtained by this newspaper along with interviews with state officials and beekeepers show the Shelby County incident is a centerpiece in a debate over Ohio’s bee laws, which some say are too lax. .
Critics want tougher enforcement that includes at a minimum mandatory notification of locations where out-of-state beekeepers place hives so the hives can be inspected for hazards.
The concerns aren’t confined to Ohio. Last year, Africanized honey bees were discovered living in a Palisade, Colo., orchard, stunning entomologists “who didn’t believe the bees could survive cold Colorado winters,” the Denver Post reported.
The hive, the first of its type found in the state, was destroyed — but not before the bees attacked the orchard’s owner. He survived, but Africanized bees can kill animals and humans because of their aggressive attacks when disturbed. They attack in larger numbers and persistently.
An agricultural extension agent speculated the bees came to Colorado from a Texas queen unknowingly introduced to a local hive by a beekeeper, or in the shipping of bees back and forth to California to pollinate almond groves.
‘They were real nasty’
One of the hot hives found in Ohio was discovered in July 2013 by Phil Kerns, then Shelby County’s bee inspector. Kerns found it near Plattsville Road.
Kerns was driving on the road adjacent to a field and noticed hives there. He contacted the landowner to investigate.
With the landowner’s permission, Kerns, a veteran beekeeper with decades of experience, returned and began opening the hives as part of the normal inspection process to check for diseases, pests or other problems.
The bees turned out to be highly aggressive — the worst Kerns can recall in 30 years of doing inspections.
The bees filled the air around him even after he applied puffs of smoke, a standard method of calming bees. Inspection became impossible. “They were real nasty,” he recalled.
Undeterred, Kerns returned early the next morning — a time when bees are more docile. He had suspicions about them and sent samples to the United States Department of Agriculture's Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Ariz., for analysis.
The sample was determined to be European with the presence of Africanized genes. However, the levels were not enough to trigger a state alarm.
Barbara Bloetscher, Ohio's state entomologist and apiarist, said the results based on fine measurements of bee anatomy, showed a 62 percent probability of Africanized genes.
The state’s policy considers a hive fully Africanized when the probability assessment is 80 percent.
Hives in two other locations in Ohio in recent years have been found with similar probability levels of Africanized genes. One hive was in southeastern Ohio and the other near Lake Erie, Bloetscher said.
Bloetscher said the hive near the lake was destroyed by its owner and the hive in Shelby County died out on its own.
That’s still no relief for Ohio beekeepers. Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine published in Medina, wrote in this month’s edition that Ohio law should, at a minimum, require the locations of bee hives that are brought in from out of state.
Beekeepers, he wrote, “should be marching on the Department of Ag with signs and baseball bats declaring that at the very least these criminals must declare their locations.”
One danger would occur if an Africanized hive in Ohio swarms and the departed bees build a new colony and reproduce, likely mixing with other bees in the region.
Under the right conditions, bees with Africanized genes will over generations breed in the wild, injecting aggressive characteristics to the regional bee population — both wild and those kept in managed hives, Flottum said.
“If they stay here and overwinter, next spring when they swarm and mate, they naturally select for other Africanized bees,” he said. “If they establish a population here, they will in a short period of time replace European bees. They swarm more often and make lots of small nests, not a big nest like European bees.”
‘We didn’t want it to spread’
After the presence of Africanized genes were detected in the hive brought to Shelby County, Kerns told the beekeeper to introduce a new, European queen to the hives that would create a more docile population from the next generation of bees.
Attempts by this newspaper to reach the beekeeper, Bryan Lee Albritten of Alachua, Fla., were unsuccessful.
“The queen should be replaced with another queen so they could prevent more Africanized bees,” Kerns said. “They have the characteristics of Africanized bees. He had to get them out of there and they were close to other beekeepers. We didn’t want it to spread.”
Things became more worrisome for Kerns when he spotted more hives from Albritten at a busy intersection close to the Sidney corporate line.
The hives were located at Vandemark and Fair roads, not far from a Dairy Queen, a hotel and a gas station. Kerns asked Albritten to move those hives, too. He complied.
Julie Ehemann, Shelby County Commissioner, backs Kerns’ concern.
“That is not a good practice because there are killer bees in Florida and you can contaminate the local population — it’s an invasive plant kind of thing,” Ehemann said. “It’s like transporting contaminated wood. We all want to support our local beekeepers.”
Kerns, who now lives in Michigan, said hives that are brought in from other states need to be inspected. “They (state officials) felt he had the bees checked in Florida and that was sufficient,” Kerns said.
Bloetscher, the state entomologist, said Ohio honey bee law is now being examined for revisions. She agrees that the language could make it clearer that migratory beekeepers, even those here for pollination only, must provide hive locations to the state. Albritton, she said, provided the state with notice of his hives being here but didn’t include exact locations.
Besides the potential problems with beekeepers moving Africanized hives into Ohio, suspicions are that queen bees ordered from other states including Texas are also showing up here with Africanized genes.
Dwight Wells, a board member of the Ohio Beekeepers Association, helped start the Heartland Honeybee Breeders Cooperative. It aims to create a Buckeye Bee, a bee that would have unique genetic traits adapted to northern climates. He’s also president of the West Central Ohio Beekeepers Association.
Wells said the state should better fund its bee program to keep the honey bee industry strong and trouble-free. Since beekeepers usually destroy “hot hives,” there’s no way to accurately assess how many dangerous bees have been in the state, Wells said. He doesn’t want the out-of-state bees interfering with the breeding programs by getting into the local genetics.
States are not required to report instances of Africanized bees to the United States Department of Agriculture, said Kim Kaplan, spokeswoman for the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA's research arm. She said she was unable to provide any stats on testing results from the U.S. bee lab in Tucson.
She called reports of Africanized bees that show up beyond Texas and Florida rare.
‘We don’t want to scare people’
Aside from the necessary changes to Ohio law to better track the migratory hives, Bloetscher said beekeepers need to be vigilant about hive temperament and correct problems quickly by requeening hives.
“We don’t want to scare people just because we have one colony with aggressive behavior,” Bloetscher said. “We don’t want to cause mass panic. We continue to see an added interest in beekeeping.”
Based on his experience, Kerns said Ohio law is already clear — honey beekeepers who place hives in the state have to provide locations to regulators. But he's happy to endorse any changes to Ohio law that makes it even more crystal clear and airtight that out-of-state hives must have locations registered with the state.
GPS technology should make this easy, he said.
“If they enact a new law, let’s include latitude and longitude locations so a bee inspector can drive right up to the bees,” he said. “We don’t want somebody hurt or killed. When a hive is brought into Ohio, it should be inspected.”
About the Author