Specialists bemused by firm's bee rating.

Byline: JEFF WRIGHT The Register-Guard

Hey Eugene, it's the Fourth of July, and we're No. 1!

This is an honor with some real buzz: Eugene heads into today's holiday ranked as the U.S. city most likely to be bedeviled by bees and wasps. We beat Medford, Portland, Salem and even New York for the distinction.

Some might see the ranking as a stinging indictment of Eugene's quality of life, but the folks at the Lanacane Itch Information Center in White Plains, N.Y., say that can't be helped:

Using "special scientific equations" based on weather factors and growing bee and wasp populations, they've placed Eugene on the top of the list of places you don't want to be if bees aren't your thing.

Throughout the Northwest, "bees and wasps are already probably pretty bad," said spokeswoman Alyson O'Mahoney of Lanacane, a leading maker of anti-itch and related skin products. Yellow jackets, notorious for their aggressiveness, can be especially troublesome, she said.

There's just one itty-bitty problem with Eugene's ranking: We probably don't deserve it.

According to local doctors and emergency room officials, bees aren't a major problem now and yellow jackets aren't expected to turn nasty for at least a month.

"It's really a nonissue, something we hardly even think about," said Tim Herrmann, manager of emergency and trauma services at Sacred Heart Medical Center. "There's no unusual killer bees."

At McKenzie-Willamette Hospital in Springfield, emergency department manager Tom Hambly was also scratching his head for an explanation. "Maybe (Lanacane's) product sales are lagging in this community and they'd like us to rush out and buy some just in case," he said.

In the height of yellow jacket season in late August and September, McKenzie-Willamette will average two to three emergency room visits a day for bee stings, Hambly said. But right now, honey bees rule the roost and create few medical problems, he said.

"Yellow jackets will chase you," he said. "Honey bees just want to be left alone."

Lanacane's O'Mahoney said the company's "Sting Forecast" is compiled in conjunction with the University of Delaware's Center for Climatic Research. Laurence Kalkstein, a climatologist at the center, said the forecast is based on multiple weather variables.

"But we don't send out monitors to Eugene to see if they're there," he said of the bees. "It could be any day soon."

The dearth of ferocious bees in the nation's Bee Sting Capital surprised O'Mahoney. "I would think the yellow jackets should be there now," she said. "That's weird."