The bees, long the subject of lore as “killer bees,” have been found in Washington and Kane counties, the Utah Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that seven hives — three in the wild and four managed by private beekeepers — contained Africanized bees. The hives have since been destroyed.

The bees in Utah do not appear to be widespread and no injuries to people or animals have been reported.

State and local officials have been anticipating the bees’ arrival since they showed up in Mesquite, Nev., in 1999, just a few miles from the Utah border.

“We’ve been saying not if but when for a long time,” said Larry Lewis, a spokesman for the state agriculture department.

The bees are the result of interbreeding between European honey bees and bees from Africa. They were inadvertently released in Brazil in the 1950s. They were first spotted in Texas in 1990 and have since been found in several other states, including California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada.

Although Africanized bees look like European honey bees, they tend to get irritated faster, respond with more firepower and stay mad longer than other bees, said Kirk Visscher, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who has studied Africanized bees since 1985.

Their stings aren’t more powerful than other bees but they are more aggressive and swarm more often.

“The danger is getting a large number of stings in a short period of time,” Visscher said.

Attacks on people and animals have happened, but are relatively rare, he said.

Africanized bees have linked to the deaths of 14 people in the United States since 1990, Utah officials said.

“This discovery makes it imperative that we think differently about honey bees in our state,” Leonard Blackham, Utah commissioner of agriculture and food, said in a statement.

The bees pose a “credible health and safety risk” but shouldn’t prompt overreaction, Blackham said.

Honey bees that pollinate fruit, vegetables and crops remain an important part of Utah’s $1.5 billion agriculture economy, state officials said.

State agricultural officials have maintained bee traps throughout southern Utah since 1994. Over the last several months, tests have been conducted on more than 80 hives in the area, state officials said.

The seven hives found with Africanized bees were near St. George and Kanab.

Blackham noted that communities in the South and Southwest have coexisted with the Africanized bees for years.

Several years ago, fire officials from Tucson, Ariz., visited Utah’s Washington County to talk about how to live with Africanized bees.

Washington County first-responders now have special protective gear to wear in situations where they might encounter Africanized bees, according to Dean Cox, the county’s emergency services coordinator.

Local officials plan to ramp up education efforts for homeowners and others about how to keep homes and buildings bee-free and what to do if they encounter a disturbed hive.

“These bees don’t go out and intentionally look for people to sting. They’re just defending their hive,” Lewis said.

It’s possible that some Africanized bees in the United States have mellowed over time as they’ve bred with more docile European honey bees, Visscher said.

That’s part of why beekeepers and existing European honey bee hives are an important line of defense against Africanized bees, he said. Managed bees also provide competition for Africanized bees and may help keep them from spreading faster.

But, at least for now, there’s no way to eradicate them on a large scale or keep them out of suitable areas, officials said.

“It’s not out of the question that they could be as far north as Salt Lake, it’s not likely though,” Lewis said.

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