“In a quiet country village stood a statue on a hill,

There I sat with ARLIS friends not long ago.”*

On a small hillock next to Hidalgo City Hall is sited a larger than life statue of a KILLER BEE. It commemorates that nameless insect who, in October of 1990, crossed illegally into the United States over the nearby Texas border but was captured and detained in an insect trap. Though their official name is “Africanized honey bee, they are known colloquially as KILLER BEES.

This insect has a dark history. It began in Brazil in 1956 when scientists reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein sought to mix African honeybees with the local variety to increase honey production. But the African bees escaped the laboratory and began to mate with and dominate the local populations. This miscegenation created a smaller but much more virulent species which began to spread northward out of Brazil at the rate of two hundred miles per year. By 1990 it was at the United States border and heading north.

Why this judgmental appellation? The Africanized honey bees, KILLER BEES, are more belligerent than domestic honey bees. They attack when riled up and tend to go first for the head. They are very irritable insects, and movements as simple as mowing grass or high winds can put them in attack mode. They are attracted to white clothes and ostentatious jewelry. It is their tendency to sting the head first that has caused most of the deaths associated with them. By May of 1991 the first attacks by these mutant bees were reported in Brownsville. The first fatality from KILLER BEE stings happened in Harlingen in 1993.

The KILLER BEES proliferate because they swarm (bee language meaning make new hives) more frequently and are less choosy about where they build their nests than domesticated bees. They will use both natural and made-made places such as hollow trees, porches, sheds, utility boxes, and garbage containers. They dominate by entering the hives of domestic bees and killing their queens. When mated with domestic bees their aggressive traits dominate the new progeny. KILLER BEE history reads like a science fiction novel. The BEES have now spread through Texas into parts of Arkansas and even into the Chesapeake Bay area. Colder climes and lack of vegetation are the only things that stop them.

The KILLER BEES’ fierce reputation has given name to the Rio Grande Valley hockey team and to rebellious Texas legislators who hid in crevices to keep their Houses from having a quorum for legislation that they couldn’t defeat by votes alone. But only the small town of Hidalgo has a statue dedicated to it.

*To the tune of “Maple on a Hill” by Gussie Davis, 1863-1899

Mayor John Franz conceived the idea for the largest KILLER BEE statue and got the City Council to appropriate $20,000 to have it built. He proclaimed Hidalgo to be Killer Bee Capitol of the World; no one disputed it. Hidalgo’s KILLER BEE was written about in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Time Magazine and The Guinness Book of World Records, and featured in a Snapple commercial. The KILLER BEE statue is pulled from the site and paraded down Hidalgo’s Main Street during the annual Border Day Parade, just as saints are in religious parades. Postcards and posters are sold with the KILLER BEE picture on it. “What other small town has something like this?” says Mayor Franz. “We're not going to follow the leaders anymore. We're going to take some chances and get out there in front."

Now here comes a personal comment: This making of lemonade when you have lemons seems to be a South Texas trait. Perhaps it was born of making do in an historically economically depressed area. There’s the story of the Border candy millionaire. When complimented for becoming a millionaire by making milk candy, he said it was especially hard since he didn’t have any milk. The kudzu vine, the walking catfish, the zebra mussel, the Asian carp and the boll weevil have found a home in the United States. So why shouldn’t Hidalgo become famous as the entry point for a dangerous, despised, ill-tempered, invasive and ugly creature like the KILLER BEE, who after all, is just looking for a home?

Did I mention that the Texas/Mexico Art Librarians posed for a picture seated beneath this statue? Next year maybe we can do the Popeye Spinach statue in Crystal City or the Bo Pilgrim colonnade in Pittsburg as we pursue art in all its forms.

Text by Gwen Dixie. Photos by Delana Bunch