Officials start to take precautions as complaints against Africanized honey bees increase.

BY PETER BAILEY

At a town hall meeting held recently at Miami Norland High School, residents and civic leaders discussed skyrocketing transit issues, gas prices, taxes — and bees.

A rogue intruder more vicious than your garden variety has apparently invaded the electric meter boxes, tires and wheelbarrows in backyards around Miami-Dade.

”We’re getting more and more calls of people being attacked by swarms of bees,” Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Al Cruz said Thursday in a phone interview. “We suspect they’re colonies of Africanized bees.”

Since 2004, their numbers throughout Florida have risen considerably.

Though there are no exact figures, experts say colonies now number in the thousands.

With a fondness for the carbon dioxide in human breath, the bees attack the mouth and nose.

Since the ill-tempered insects are identical to their more docile European counterpart, passersby are often caught off-guard by their aggressiveness.

The bees attack those in a 100-yard radius of their hives and will pursue an intruder for up to 300 yards, Cruz said. Attempts to domesticate the bees by introducing them to European colonies have so far failed because they eventually take over the colony, he said.

Beginning in the Interstate 4 corridor in Central Florida, the bees have spread south and are now most prevalent in Homestead and Redland, Cruz said.

In Miami Gardens, where many complaints have been made of bees attacking residents, officials are taking precautions.

”The calls in my district of people being attacked by bees have escalated,” County Commissioner Barbara Jordan said. “The public needs to be aware of how dangerous these bees are.”

So far, the bees have killed at least 16 people in other states and injured several more and have killed a horse and other animals in Florida. The fact that they produce more honey than pure European bees is offset by their aggressive nature and makes them a liability in Florida’s honeybee economy, which has about 200,000 of the country’s two million commercial bee hives.

Jordan has enlisted several pastors in Miami Gardens to host presentations on how to avoid bee attacks.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/neighbors/story/585031.html