What is being done about AHBs?
MarkedQueen State Agriculture Departments in the U.S. have been tracking and studying them for years. The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food has been setting traps for the past 5 years as an “early warning line”. So far none have been discovered in Utah, although they have been found within 30 miles of the Utah border, in Mesquite, Nevada. Here is a map in Adobe Acrobat format showing AHB trap locations in Southern Utah. Some beekeepers “paint” (mark with a dot of paint) the European queens in their hives and check yearly to make sure the hive hasn’t been taken over by Africanized honeybees. Others re-queen the hives yearly to make sure they have docile European honeybees. In addition, other training and prevention programs have been and are being put into effect. It is likely that wild colonies of European Honey Bees will eventually become Africanized in areas where the AHB is known to be present.
