DJAMILA NOELLE GROSSMAN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Mike Garcia, bee specialist for Northwest Bee Master, exterminates a beehive yesterday at Monaco Condominiums, 1620 N. Wilmot Road. This is an especially busy spring season, as bees indulge on many flowers blooming due to warm temperatures and above average rainfall.

College brings in removal experts

Experts are warning people to beware of bees as an exceptionally busy insect season swarms Tucson.

Because of above-average rainfall the city received this season, flowers are thriving, and that may mean more bees than usual, said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, director of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson.

"We expect a good bloom season," said DeGrandi-Hoffman, an adjunct professor in the entomology department. "And the more flowers there are, the more pollen and nectar there is."

In the past three weeks there have been 10 to 12 bee swarms reported on campus, said Deryl Smith, assistant director of Facilities Management's grounds services department.

Last week, an Arizona Diamondbacks spring training game at Tucson Electric Park was called in the fifth inning after a swarm of bees invaded the field.

And experts say the bee season is just beginning.

Dave Langston, a Tucson entomologist and superintendent of the UA's Maricopa Agricultural Center, said in Arizona it is safe to assume almost all bees in the wild are Africanized, or so-called "killer" bees.

Langston, who researched Africanized bees and worked on the UA's Africanized Honey Bee Education Project before the insects arrived in Arizona in 1993, said despite popular belief Africanized bees are an aggressive species that attack without reason, the bees only attack when they feel threatened.

"They're highly defensive of their colony, food supply and their young," said Langston, also an adjunct entomology professor. "Forty to 60 percent of the colony will come out to defend (the colony)."

On campus, trash barrels filled with sticky soda cans often attract bees looking for food, but Langston said bees "foraging" for food are not likely to attack.

However, where bees are feeding, it is possible there could be a colony nearby, Langston said.

When bee swarms are reported on campus, the grounds services department barricades the area and calls in bee removal experts, Smith said.

But Smith said it is impossible to predict where bee problems might occur.

"They can be in the most unusual areas," Smith said. "They can be anywhere."

Langston said bees typically look for dark cavities to nest in, such as an overturned flowerpot or stack of tires.

Old couches, a fixture of many college students' porches, can also be a haven for bees if they have an open frame underneath them, DeGrandi-Hoffman said.

DeGrandi-Hoffman said if attacked by a swarm of bees, a person should run as fast as possible and get inside an enclosed space.

"A healthy individual can outrun these things," she said.

Langston said bee and wasp stings kill more people in the United States each year than all other bite deaths, including snakebites, combined.

With April being a prime month for bees, and conditions this year particularly inviting to the insects, people are being warned to keep their eyes and ears open for the buzz of trouble.

"You've just got to be aware of your environment," DeGrandi-Hoffman said.