by Michael Clancy - Sept. 16, 2012 09:07 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Bee attacks over the past three weeks are closely tied to the recent rainy weather, several bee experts say.
But the situation is more complicated than that.
Monsoon storms drive the bees into their hives, where by nature they are in a defensive mode. The storms also generate desert growth, which enables bees to collect more pollen and reproduce more quickly.
The result: A lot of bees in a confined area that are ready to go into active defensive behavior if the hive is disrupted in even a gentle way.
The recent attacks took place on:
Aug. 21: A 64-year-old Glendale woman and her 4-year-old granddaughter were stung multiple times by bees that may have originated in a nearby backyard hive.
Aug. 23: A man living outside of Queen Creek was hospitalized after bees attacked him as he mowed his lawn.
Aug. 24: A Glendale landscaper was stung blocks from where the Aug. 21 attack took place.
Sept. 10: A 91-year-old man was stung upwards of 50 times. Scottsdale police found multiple hives in the eaves of the house where the man was living.
Virl Dowdy, who has kept bees for 40 to 50 years, said when rain falls and skies are cloudy, bees tend to stick to the hive. There, crowding tends to irritate the bees.
"Just about anything will set them off," he said.
Dowdy, of the Beekeepers Association of Central Arizona, said the attacks no doubt came from Africanized bees, which are wild in the desert and can take over a beekeeper's hives if he or she is not vigilant.
"It takes so little to irritate Africanized bees," he said. "You can brush by one on a bush and thousands can be on you in a minute."
The overall number of bee attacks has not increased in recent years, although experts say that the numbers are certainly higher than they were nearly 20 years ago, when the first Africanized bees entered the state.
The Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center reported 494 bee-related incidents through Sept. 11 in 2010, 379 in 2011 and 339 this year.
Phoenix Fire Department statistics show 348 bee-related calls through Sept. 11 in 2010, 436 in 2011 and 346 this year.
Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, an entomologist with the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, said colonies may be even more crowded than normal after growing all summer.
"People need to be aware of their surroundings," she said, especially in urban areas.
She said the attacks are always near beehives that are disturbed in some fashion. Quite often, the victims never knew the hives were nearby.
Bill Dullas, president of the beekeepers group, said in his experience, Africanized bees tend to swarm in the late summer and fall, but swarming bees are less dangerous than bees defending a hive.
He said Africanized bees are causing all kinds of problems for beekeepers and the public.
"This problem will be continuous," he said. "They can invade good hives, and they reproduce rapidly."
Most beekeepers try to keep their hives stocked with European honeybees, the type that is native to the area.
But ever since Africanized bees reached Arizona in 1993, they have taken over most wild hives.
Dullas said it is important for beekeepers to keep track of their queens, to replace queens annually and to locate their hives outside of urban areas.
17 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2012/09/11/20120911phoenix-bee-attacks-rain.html
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