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- <text id=90TT2821>
- <title>
- Oct. 29, 1990: American Notes:Texas
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Oct. 29, 1990 Can America Still Compete?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 47
- American Notes
- TEXAS
- Buzzing Over The Border
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Yet another swarm of intruders has crashed through America's
- porous Southwestern border: so-called killer bees. Last week
- the Department of Agriculture spotted the first incursion on
- U.S. soil of Africanized bees, originally imported to Brazil
- from Africa in 1957 for a breeding experiment. All the bees
- were trapped east of Hidalgo in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and
- promptly destroyed.
- </p>
- <p> The arrival of the killer bees had been feared ever since
- hives were discovered in northern Mexico in 1986. The insects'
- sting is normally no more dangerous than that of their domestic
- cousins, but, says Terry Lockamy of the Texas Agriculture
- Extension Service, "these are bees with an attitude problem."
- They are more aggressive and can attack an intruder by the
- hundreds, and kill, when their colony is disturbed. The bees'
- real threat, however, is to the farming and honey industries:
- Africanized bees are less efficient crop pollinators and honey
- producers, and could cause multimillion-dollar losses if they
- infest the nation's apiaries.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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