Firefighters learn how to handle killer bees

WEST PALM BEACH — The state-of-the-art rescue equipment for battling so-called killer bees: firefighting chemical foam and a beekeeper's suit, with its goofy pith helmet and mesh veil.

Best advice if you're caught in a bee attack without your suit? Run and keep running. Enraged killer bees will give chase for about three football fields. Run farther.

"If you disturb a colony of bees, make sure you're not the slowest person around," said bee expert Bill Kern, a University of Florida professor of entomology and nematology based in Fort Lauderdale.

Firefighters from at least 15 Palm Beach County cities took Kern's three-hour course Thursday in dealing with the latest apocalyptic scourge to threaten Florida: Africanized honeybees.

Africanized bees, though indistinguishable from the more docile European variety, are more aggressive, anger faster and attack in dozens instead of a handful.

They breed more often, though their colonies are smaller, spread faster in the wild and are not particular about where they set up camp: in a water meter box, in the rafters of a park pavilion, under a bench.

"They're about the only ones who like school portables," Kern said of the bees that nest beneath them.

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