Africanized honey bee (AHB), hybrids between African honey bees (Apis mellifera scutelata) and European honey bees, arrived in the United States from South America in 1990. Within the past two decades, it has spread out at a rate of 180 to 300 miles per year. The first documented appearance of AHB in Arizona was is 1993. Now, the bee populations are growing and distribute widely in the greater Tucson metropolitan area, AZ. Comparing with surrounding desert areas, urban environments in Tucson can provide more stable food and cavity resources (e.g. water meter box) for AHB. The presence of abundant resources in urban environments places bees in proximity to humans. It may create concerns over public health and safety within the areas of AHB aggregations. In this study, the information of AHB colony removal records from 1995 to 2004 was obtained from water meter checking lists of Tucson Water Department. For each record, the information included occurred date, address, problem type, occurred location (i.e. water meter), and coordinates for each locations, which derived through address matching process using ArcGIS software. We also analyzed the spatio-temporal patterns of colony distributions and evaluated the role of climate factors (i.e. temperature & precipitation) using GIS and statistics approaches. The occurrence records of AHB started from 221 in 1995 and reached the peak, 1088, in 1999.
Results/Conclusions
The significant spatio-temporal clustering occurred in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2001. Temperature and precipitation have been identified as potential factors contributing to the dispersal patterns of AHB in North America. Our studies indicated that colony would occur more following with wet seasons. As Well as, the moderate winter temperature may associate with higher survival rate and quickly population growth for the following spring. It may suggest that human-bee interactions may happen more due to higher abundance of Africanized honey bees. The results may not only provide useful information for bee behaviors in urban environments, but also bring the awareness of public safety for Africanized honey bees.
