"I was afraid they were going to kill me":Modesto Ca: Bees attack 70 year old man walking his dog

MODESTO -- African honey bees attacked a 70-year-old man walking his dogs near Modesto in the first known documented "killer bees" assault north of Madera.
Agricultural officials believe African bees have not colonized north of Tulare County and suspect that the July 5 attack, though savage, was isolated.

"It felt like my head was on fire," Jack McBride said Saturday, a day after learning that a state laboratory confirmed the identity of the aggressive insects that stung him more than 50 times.

"They zeroed in on my head," McBride said. "I couldn't see anything but bees. I was spitting them out, then gritted my teeth so they wouldn't get in. I was afraid they were going to kill me."

McBride was stung inside his nose and on his eyelids, face, neck, armpits and torso.

He fell, lost his glasses, tried rolling and finally ran, half-blinded, about one-eighth of a mile to take shelter in a house -- bees chasing him the whole way.

European honey bees, crucial for pollinating many California crops, "just don't overdo it like that," said Eric Mussen, a University of California at Davis apiculturist, or bee expert.

Mussen and Gary Caseri, Stanislaus County's agriculture commissioner, said African bees likely swarmed, or escaped a hive to repopulate elsewhere, after being trucked in to pollinate almonds around Modesto.

It's unlikely that African bees moved that far north on their own without confrontations reported in other counties such as Fresno and Merced, Mussen said.

African bees are similar to their European cousins in size, venom and honey production, but are much more defensive of territory, sending many more attackers and chasing victims up to a quarter-mile.
Ambulance workers administered antihistamine and an IV before rushing McBride to the hospital, where he was given morphine for pain.

"I was bitten so many times. It felt like the worst sunburn you've ever had," he said.
He felt better in about 24 hours and eventually retrieved his glasses.

One of his dogs was stung in the eye and another vomited, so he took both to a veterinarian. They seemed to recover more quickly, McBride said.

The property owner hired an exterminator who destroyed four nests, using a crane to reach some in trees.

See the rest of the story here

Entomologist's Comment:

This event is becoming ever more common... A resident, out doing his or her thing, becomes a victim of a Killer Bee Attack. 

Sadly, attacks by Africanized Honey Bees, (AHB or Killer Bees), will only become more commonplace, as these invasive insects continue to exploit available areas. Here in Florida, our official AHB slogan is " Bee Aware: Look, Listen, Run!, which at first sounds silly, but in fact is quite helpful. Take a look at our Dept. of Agriculture's, Apiary Section AHB Poster

Bee Aware: Look, Listen, Run poster

Richard Martyniak, M.Sc., Entomologist
The Buzzkillers, LLC
ALLFloridaBeeRemoval.com

Millions of bees swarm after Mississippi wreck

By Emily Lane  | The Natchez Democrat

Published Saturday, March 19, 2011

NATCHEZ — You would be ticked, too, if you and 44 million of your buddies were stuffed in an 18-wheeler when it flopped over like a dead daisy in the middle of pollination season.
Truck driver Mike Johnson had almost reached his South Adams County destination to put 448 honeybees to bed Thursday night, when the truck’s back axle fell in a ditch on the passenger side and pulled the hulking truck with a swarming cargo flat to its side.
The bees were coming from California to a plot of land near Sibley in order to catch Mississippi’s warm weather and early pollination season before being hauled off to South Dakota to get busy making money, Ken Ensminger said.

Photo by Eric Shelton

Bees swarm around their boxes after the accident.

Photo by Eric Shelton

Bees swarm around their boxes after the accident.

Ensminger is a coordinator stationed in Vidalia for A.H. Meyer & Sons Inc., a family-owned beekeeping company.
The truck fell over at approximately 9 p.m. Thursday when it was on its way up to the field from the highway. It did not get turned upright until 3:30 p.m. Friday, after all of the bee hives were rescued and laid out on the property in their customary white boxes.
Ensminger said the bee hives were covered with a net inside the truck, so they did not escape and were not harmed. It took from 5 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. Friday to cut each box containing a hive out of the netting on the back of the truck and stack them in the field, Ensminger said.
Crews with Curtis Wrecker Services, who arrived to pull the 18-wheeler right side up, were decked out in white bee suits and netted hats, which Ensminger lent to them.
“They’re ticked off,” Ensminger said of the bees. “But they’ll (calm down) and then you can control them like anything else.”
Ensminger, whose only protection was a netted mask that attached to his Louisiana State University straw hat, said he had not been stung Thursday night or all of Friday even though he surrendered his suit to the towing employees.
“But I get stung all the time,” he said.
A crew member from Curtis said he was stung three times before he was able to put on his suit.
Ensminger said the men were able to clean up the mess much faster than he anticipated and that it could have been much worse.
He said the property owner, who trades the use of his property for three cases of honey, was very understanding about the mishap in his field, Ensminger said.
By 3 p.m., many of the bees had already settled down from the “trauma” of the car wreck. But the ones who were most recently rattled by the move from the truck made the sky and white boxes where their hives are kept look black from their swarming.
“They’re just confused,” Ensminger said. “By morning they’ll decide which box is theirs, and they’ll home-up.”
Ensminger said the worker bees who swarmed were looking for their queens.



For more of this article go to Natchez Democrat