[pct-l] Africanized (Killer) Bees

[Erik The Black]

I was attacked by a colony of bees when I was about 12 years old. This was
in the high desert of Southern California in about 1992. I don't know if
killer bees were here yet, but if they were these might have been them,
because they were VERY aggressive.

I was out hiking in the desert when I noticed some white boxes in the
distance, which I now know were man-made bee hives (but back then I had no
idea). They were just out in the middle of nowhere down a makeshift dirt
road (not on anybody's land) so I went to investigate...

Before I could even get close the bees were on top of me! There were
thousand of them swarming around my head so thick that I couldn't even see.
They flew into my eyes, ears and nostrils and down my shirt. I remember the
hum was as loud as a lawnmower...

I ran flat out for more than a mile towards home and the whole time they
stayed right on top of me, stinging me the whole way. I expected them to
give up as soon as I got safely out of their territory, but they didn't.
They just kept coming.

When I got home my hair and clothes were full of dead bee carcasses and I'd
been stung a couple hundred times. I was very sick after that and my body
was so swollen that I couldn't even bend my arms. After about a week the
swelling went down and I got better.

The thing that surprised me is they didn't wait for me to get very close
before they attacked. I was still about 1/8 mile away from their boxes. I
didn't even hear a faint buzzing in the distance, so I had no idea I was
even near bees until it was too late.

When they attacked it happened in an instant and took me completely by
surprise. It took a minute to make the connection that it was bees. I
thought I was being attacked by a poltergeist or something!

I don't have anything useful to add about avoiding bees, other than run like
hell. But I just thought I would share that experience.

-Erik the Black
www.eriktheblack.com



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Message: 6
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 17:35:21 -0800
From: "JIM BANKS" <jbanks4 at socal.rr.com>
Subject: [pct-l] Africanized (Killer) Bees
To: <pct-l at backcountry.net>
Message-ID: <8E03BAA492F64C72A42A7C45E9246429 at anglosaxon>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

I saw this article about Africanized (Killer) Bees posted on WhiteBlaze and
I thought it would be good to pass it on.  My intention is not to freak
anyone out, but rather to share an article that actually has some useful
information about what to do if you encounter killer bees on the trail.  The
article is from the National Park Service - 

http://www.nps.gov/sagu/planyourvisit/upload/Africanized%20Honey%20Bees.pdf



Jim "I-Beam" Banks