Colonies of Africanized honey bees, known as killer bees, have now been discovered in metropolitan Los Angeles RELATED VIDEO CNN's Jennifer Auther tracks the killer bees Windows Media 28K 56K

January 14, 1999
Web posted at: 4:22 p.m. EST (2122 GMT)

• Five deaths
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LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Killer bees have come to Los Angeles, the first major metropolitan area in the United States to be officially declared colonized by the potentially deadly insects.

Southern California now joins four other southwestern states where Africanized bees -- dubbed killer bees because they are more aggressive than ordinary bees -- have been spotted.

"I ran, but they were following me," said a little girl in Lawndale, a community where Los Angeles County's first known colony of killer bees was found in an apartment building last month.

Since then, the bees have colonized an area covering 1,010 square miles, including 76 cities and 23 unincorporated areas. Cato Fiksdal, chief of the state Agriculture Department, said he expects the entire county to be colonized by the end of the year.

"The declaration of colonization does not really change anything but puts the county residents and agencies on a higher level of alert regarding the presence of the bees," he said.

Throughout Southern California, more than 34,000 square miles have been colonized with killer bees, including all of Imperial, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and parts of San Diego County.

Five deaths

Killer bees also have made themselves at home in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Five people are known to have died from killer bee stings nationwide since 1990, the last in April 1997 when a 72-year- old man was attacked at his mobile home in Casa Grande, Arizona.

It takes a trained eye to distinguish between Africanized bees and their less aggressive cousins, but pest control experts say that when the killers arrive, they take over.

"They're not passing through," says Lance Davis, a professional killer bee remover in the Palm Springs, California, area.

In fact, he told CNN, within 10 hours after a swarm enters a home or structure, the bees can have some honeycomb built and eggs laid. After 21 days, as many as 2,000 eggs can begin hatching.

To defend against infestation, Davis recommends that businesses and homeowners plug holes and use screens to bee- proof their structures.

"Anything an eighth of an inch or larger (and) they can get in," he says.

Davis and his crew don't wear protective suits on the job. They use smoke, which causes bees to gorge themselves with honey, and become lethargic, making it easy to dispose of them through a suction device that works like a vacuum cleaner.

Correspondent Jennifer Auther and The Associated Press contributed to this report.