‘Killer bees’ found in South Carolina

COLUMBIA, SC A hive filled with aggressive, Africanized honey bees has been destroyed in Charleston County as state officials search the countryside to see if any more of the stinging pollinators are living in the area.

Clemson University inspectors recently discovered the Africanized insects, commonly known as killer bees, in a domestic bee-keeping operation outside the city of Charleston.

The discovery of the killer bees is the first in South Carolina since 2001. State inspectors think they found and killed all the Africanized bees in the area, but are checking to make sure, according to Clemson.

“This appears just to be a localized incident, but as a precaution we have depopulated the hive and are conducting a survey within a two-mile area to determine whether any Africanized honey bees remain,” inspector Brad Cavin said in a Clemson release Monday. “Depending on those results we’ll decide whether any additional efforts will be required.”

Killer bees are more likely to attack people than the honey bee species that is native to North America. With less provocation, they have been known to swarm and sting people or animals hundreds of times. Africanized bees were introduced in Brazil some 50 years ago.

Wild populations of killer bees have been moving from South America into North America since at least the 1970s, but they have never reached the Carolinas. The only killer bees found in either state in the past have been those that were somehow transported either on airplanes or ships, experts say. Most recently, killer bees were discovered in an airplane wing in Greenville in 2001, Clemson officials said.

In the Charleston case, Cavin said he conducted a routine check of a honey bee colony last month to make sure Africanized bees did not exist. Laboratory test results that came in earlier this month confirmed that the bees were not the type native to North America, he said.

“I said ‘Wow!,’ ‘’ he said in an interview with The State newspaper. “It’s kind of a big deal because this was from a managed colony, not like a feral or wild beehive.’’

Domestic bee-keeping is a big industry in South Carolina. The state has about 2,500 beekeepers managing 30,000 honey bee colonies, according to Clemson.

Luckily, the killer bees were not discovered in the wild, Cavin said.

Cavin declined to say where in Charleston County the bees were found, but he said a bee-keeping operation outside of the city apparently acquired a nest of the Africanized insects without realizing it. He estimated there were easily thousands of bees in the nest. The university is still investigating to learn more about who sold the hive and whether any laws were violated.

So far, the wild populations of the bees have been confined mostly to Florida and the western United States. But they are believed to be spreading into northern California, according to news accounts. There, bees suspected of being of the Africanized strain recently swarmed, attacked and killed two small dogs.

Dave Tarpy, an entomologist who studies bees at N.C. State University, said it is not yet known if the Africanized bees could live in the wild in areas such as the Carolinas that experience cold weather in the winter.

“They are tropical so whether they really would persist in places that have even kind of moderate winters, it’s still up in the air,’’ he said. “They’ve kind of baffled scientists and all predictions throughout their entire 50 year history in the Americas. It’s hard to say whether they will be a natural part of the environment or not.’’

This story was originally published May 23, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "‘Killer bees’ found in South Carolina."