EMS workers, firefighters and law enforcement officers are about to learn how to respond to a possible influx of Africanized honeybees into the state, according to Kansas Department of Agriculture Program Manager Bill Scott.

Recently discovered about 80 miles south of the Kansas border in Dewey
County, Okla., the bees possibly could cross into the state, said Sharon Dobesh, a pest management coordinator at Kansas State University.

To the undiscerning eye, the insects look like common honeybees, but they don't have the docile honeybee personality, Dobesh said.

"The European honeybees - the ones we think of as honeybees - and the Africanized honeybee are undistinguishable to the human eye," Dobesh said. "If you are looking at them side by side, you can't tell the difference. But you can see a difference in the behavior and how they act as a group."