By: By Eric Zerkel
Published: March 9,2014
The incident unfurled in a gated community in Palm Desert, Calif., after a Verizon employee came to check on a subterranean cable box at a home in the neighborhood. According to ABC, the Verizon employee came to investigate a report of bees emerging from the box. Little did the Verizon employee know, an estimated 80,000 "killer" bees had constructed a hive on the underside of the lid of the box. The bees went into a frenzy when the employee lifted the lid, attacking at least six residents, and later, five firefighters who responded to the attack, reports The Press Enterprise.
One of the unfortunate bystanders was the 71-year-old woman, who reportedly had just emerged from her vehicle when the bees went into attack mode. The bees swarmed her before she could react, covering nearly every square inch of her body, according to firefighters at the scene.
“You couldn’t see her,” Cal Fire Battalion Chief Mark Williams told The Press Enterprise. "When the first engine company arrived, they described an elderly woman completely covered head to toe in bees, as if she was wearing a suit of bees," Williams added. "They were even pulling stings out of her mouth."
The woman tried to seek shelter in her vehicle, but the car provided little refuge.
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"They just went into her car and attacked her," Lance Davis of Killer Bees Inc., the company tasked with clearing out the bees, told Palm Desert Patch. "They were mad."
Firefighters rushed to rescue the woman, draping her in a blanket to stop the onslaught of bees. She was quickly whisked away into an ambulance and taken to a local hospital where she was treated for more than 1,000 bee stings. According to ABC, the woman is expected to survive, but was taken to the hospital in "critical condition." Her current condition is unknown.
Firefighters involved in the rescue were also taken to the hospital to treat stings to the face, neck, back and hands, reports ABC. All the firefighters are expected to recover.
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Davis then sprung into action, inundating the hive with smoke to confuse the bees, reports The Press Enterprise. Once the bees were calm, Davis vacuumed up the offending bees, removed the hive and transported the remainder of the colony to his own hive to be later used by local farmers for crop pollination.
But according to Davis, this sort of behavior is typical of killer bees, especially when they're trying to protect their hive.
“They’re quick to anger, and they are relentless in their attack,” Davis told The Press Enterprise. “If it takes the whole hive to protect against an intruder, or someone perceived to be an intruder, they will do it.”
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A male anthophora terminalis. (Flickr/Sam Droege/USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring)
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