Africanized honeybees found in Louisiana

Africanized honeybees have been found near Tioga, about eight miles north of Alexandria and 140 miles southeast of the Caddo Parish town where they were first discovered in Louisiana.

At their current speed, they're likely to cover most of the state by the end of next year, said Allen Fabre, coordinator for nursery and bee programs for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

"I think they'll be to the Mississippi line by end of 2009," Fabre said in an interview Thursday. "Some beekeepers from Mississippi were in California for a meeting last week. I told them they're knocking on their door, and they know it."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory in Tucson, Ariz., confirmed that bees trapped in Tioga were hybrids of European and African species, a department news release said.

The department keeps a line of traps running north and south, spaced about two miles apart, to keep track of the bees' advance.

"After this recent positive north of Alexandria, the trap line located immediately north and south of Alexandria will be moved 30-50 miles east of the find," state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom said.

Africanized bees are the result of an experiment to increase honey production in Brazil. A swarm of the small, aggressive bees escaped a laboratory in 1957 and headed north. When they mated with native strains, the offspring turned out to be as aggressive as the African parents.

They reached Texas in 1990 and have spread west to California and east to Florida.

The first swarms found in Louisiana were in Rodessa, near Shreveport, in July 2005 and near Lake Charles the following month.

The bees are a bit smaller than pure European honeybees, but not enough to tell them apart by sight, Fabre said. Although the Africanized bees may attack in groups, they are unlikely to do so without some sort of provocation, he said.

Two swarms of hybrids were found last year in the New Orleans area, but the bees do not appear to be spreading from that area, Fabre said.