Killer Bee attack

[H-2 Charlie 187]

This Saturday I was out in ridgecrest with friends they were under a easy up roto tilling and Jack hammering for dry wash material.  I was going up a close by hill beeping with my GM 1000 .8:30 am I had a lite cotton dark blue long sleeve shirt wearing Brute deodorant with no headphones on and the detector was screaming at full volume.  I was about 250 feet from my Ford pickup when the attack started.  With one bee on the back of each ear one on the back of my neck one on my shoulder and 2 circling the front of my face I pulled off my hat and started swatting these killers  . To no avail they would not move and relentlessly would not give up . I ran to my truck  flailing my hat and even at my truck one was on my nose still had them  behind my ears with a few circling me . I got in my truck and prayed none made it in there , I was safe. Looking in my mirror I had a stinger sticking right out the side of my  nose . It was pretty scary knowing if there had been  twice as many bees and my truck could have been twice or three times farther.  I ended up with about 7 stings / welts and 3 were kinda big . The one especially on the front of my neck , and boy it itched  . I think the detectors sound set them off then my floral deodorant attracted them with the dark blue shirt  .

Bee careful guys because this was no joke .

[Dakota Slim 1,118]

Lucky you. I came within 20 feet of a swarm once and slowly backed off without any issue but things would have been different if I hadn't seen them. 
They were in a collapsed wooden shed near Rich Hill and I was a long way from my Samurai. 

[Stillweaver hillbelli 338]

Yup, any scent is a nono...and leave  floral print( or dark) clothing at home.

It sounds like you were hit by some "guards" on the perimeter-which could be well beyond 100 yards away from an "africanized" hive.

[LukeJ 2,148]

Good thing you got out of there with only a few stings.

Last time I was out detecting with Andy, we had a swarm fly over us.  I heard it and realized and started to run, but thankfully they were just 'flying over' and gone in a few seconds.  

[Beeper Bob 91]

I don't think they have killer bees in the ridgecrest area. You could have just gotten too close to a hive or been in the bees path flying back to the hive.  Once the bees scent mark you as a threat they will come at you like that.  Have my own hives, once putting mite strips in the hive with no protection on I got stung and marked on the neck with pheromone My nice little domestic  bees came at me and chased me into the house. while in the upstairs bath they kept fly at the screen trying to get me. Even the next day had to stay away from them or they would go at me.

[NvAuMiner 396]

I had a swarm fly about 30' over my head once.  I heard it coming and I thought it was a plane coming down. It was the size of a VW Bug in a tear drop shape.  I just knelt down and thankfully they buzzed on by.  I also had a nice sounding target in some rocky ground and when I knelt down and hit the ground with my pick . . . bee's started coming out of a crack in the ground near by.  I quickly got out of there before they got too irritated.  Hind-site... I should of GPS'd the location for a winter time hunt.

You got lucky!  Like you said, if there were more and your rig was farther away... it could of been real bad.

[Bedrock Bob 4,161]

Whenever someone sees a swarm of bees or gets multiple bee stings it is always "killer bees" or "Africanized Bees".

The cold hard facts are that all bees swarm and you can get stung multiple times by any kind of bees. 

I have been stung multiple times on multiple occasions. Hardly a season goes by that you don't get a couple in your hair or see a big swarm or two. There are thousands of hives in the valley to pollinate the orchards and fields. No matter where you are you are within a few hundred yards of a bee hive in the Rio Grande Valley.

Those hives will split and new queens take up residence in lots of places. So bees are everywhere and can be a problem.

This is the case in most farming areas. Especially with tree crops. It SHOULD be dangerous to walk through a nut orchard in the spring. Farmers do everything they can to get those bees in there. There are hives located at the borders of every orchard.

Over the years there have been hundreds of "bee attacks" in my community. At least three have been fatal. I don't think any have been "killer bees" or "Africanized". They have just been regular honey bees. But every time there is a bee attack it is described as "killer bees" or "Africanized Bees".

It sucks to get stung. Especially in the neck or head. And it exponentially sucks when a squadron of them decides to attack. You have to keep your eyes open for bee activity just like watching for rattlesnakes. Bees kill a lot more people in my neck of the woods than rattlesnakes do. And everyone gets stung sooner or later. Very few get snakebit.

I have been chased to the truck a couple times by aggressive bees. But I have ran for my life a dozen times from mosquitoes.

Biting flies will spoil your day and hurt you worse than all the bees and mosquitoes put together. A swarm of those rascals will chew your ears and eyebrows off in a few seconds and make your eyes swell shut from the toxins. Some summers in the desert are so bad you can't go out anywhere without a head net. I'd rather get stung by a half dozen bees than get eaten alive by those meat eating flies.

[mn90403 986]

A couple of weeks ago I went up to Sierra City.  I went to an area that was very, very dry and they had been cutting some timber.  That was all long gone but as I began to dig a couple of dig holes I was 'approached' by yellow jackets.  At first they just went to the bottom of the dig holes.  Then they started landing on my arms.  I didn't have any repellent and I tried to keep detecting.  Eventually they were getting behind my sunglasses and that was as much as I could take.  One stung me on my wrist and another one under my arm.  There was no where I could hunt over about a square mile area that they wouldn't soon show up.  I left.

I hate them worse than bees. 

[Stillweaver hillbelli 338]

I read that they can be triggerred by CO2...so I exhaled close to a bee gathering pollen on a flower. It got and I split.

Swarms fly a few times a year over our garden. I just crouch down and hold my breath while they pass over.

[LowPoint 1,259]

It's been about 15 or-so years ago when I had a run in with some bees that I will never forget.  I was an outside sales rep for an industrial products company in Tucson and was up promoting our products at the copper mine not far from Mammoth, Arizona.  I had just left the ball mill and was heading back to Tucson in the afternoon when I decided that I needed to take a leak,.."Bad".  I was just coming up to a couple of abandoned buildings, so I thought I'd cruise in behind and do my duty.  So, without paying much attention to the surroundings (due to my urgency) I whipped around the corner of the building, unzipped my pants, and let the flood gates flow....I no more than started feeling relief when all of a sudden something hit me around my left ear, and then another something hit me on my left arm ( I had a short sleeve shirt on), but I wasn't stung.  It was about then a couple came in at my face, as I looked up and saw that there was about a dozen bees on the old building wall about 8-10 ft above me, and many more within a scraggly-hole in the wall.  "OH CRAP!!"  So here I am peeing all over myself trying to zip my pants up, trying to run to my pickup, and franticly swatting the dozen-or-so that changed their mode of attack, and where starting to sting me as I ran.  My pickup wasn't more than about 10-12 ft away, but they where on me Big Time.  As I opened the door and slammed it behind me I could hear them hitting the driver's side window ( glad that I had left it rolled up), as they came at me full speed.  Not only that, but three of them had been close enough to follow me into the pickup;.... so I was thrashing and swatting in the cab to keep them off.  I eventually smashed-off their attacking actions, and made sure there were no more in the cab,...But it wasn't without getting stung, as they got me three different places, the worst-of-which was in the upper-left eye lid, which swelled up tight enough that I couldn't see out of it for a few days.  It actually swelled shut on the trip back to Tucson.  I don't care what reference-name you call bees,.....Bees' will be Bees!!!!  And sometimes it doesn't take much to piss-them-Off,,,Hmmmmmm       

[Mike Furness 1,522]

And that ladies and gentlemen is why I always carry some Benadryl liquid capsules in my pocket or pack when I am out by myself detecting. You just never know when those 'friendlies' will fire upon you! LOL! The reason I carry liquid caps is so I can put a dab directly on the sting and swallow the rest to help slow down the potential allergic reaction. 

[BMc 1,045]

 " AGGRESSIVE WASPS AND 'MEAT BEES' HIT WEST COAST"

LOS ANGELES, SEPT. 12 --" Unusually large squadrons of hostile yellow jacket wasps, joined by an aggressive new species, are sending people to hospitals along the West Coast. "Those suckers are eating us alive," said Ruth Budesa of the northern California town of Sonora. At least one horse died after disturbing a nest of the meat-eating yellow jacket, also known as the meat bee. "One sting is enough to kill a hypersensitive human," said George Poinar, an entomologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Fifty to 75 stings are enough to kill a normal human." Last weekend, more than 20 sting victims sought aid at the Yosemite National Park clinic, including a woman who went into shock. Rangers say more than 100 people have been treated for wasp stings in the past three weeks. "This in my 10 years of experience is the worst I've ever seen for meat bees," sad Ed Heneveld, who works in the Tahoe Forest Hospital emergency room in Truckee. "I've treated five people myself who have been stung inside the mouth." Entomologists say last winter's mild weather allowed more wasps to survive"

Back in the 80's and 90's, II had a couple of painful experiences with hyper-aggressive "Meat Bees" (Western Yellow Jacket Wasps) in Northern Calif and Eastern Oregon,

while deer hunting. The first time, I was hit by a large swarm that shot out of a rodent burrow in the ground about 20 feet in front of where I was walking. I dropped my rifle and ran but they kept diving on me all the way back to my truck about a hundred yards or so, getting inside my jacket, cap and sunglasses. I got stung over a dozen times on my head, face, hands, and neck before I was able to peel off all the layers of clothes I had on and get them crunched up.

 

I put on a good mosquito net hat, tied off my pant cuffs, and shirt/jacket sleeves, and slipped on a pair of gloves, then went back to retrieve my rifle, but of course they were waiting for me. After pouring a half gal of gasoline down the burrow and setting it on fire, I grabbed my rifle, returned to my truck and finished killing the rest of the bunch that were crawling all over my jacket, still dutifully trying to sting the hell out of me. The pain from the wasp stings was not much worse than bee stings and mostly went away by the next day. 

 

On another occasion, I was taking a leak, and got dive bombed by a Meat Bee that took out a chunk of wienie, and boy did that hurt! It wasn't a sting, but a pincer incision that was a lot worse. I carry cans of Yellow Jacket spray in my truck now and found that to be pretty effective against regular wasps and hornets. Thankfully, I haven't run into any Meat Bees since I left Calif.

 

 

 

[mariposagoldbag 142]

On 10/9/2020 at 7:29 PM, mn90403 said:

A couple of weeks ago I went up to Sierra City.  I went to an area that was very, very dry and they had been cutting some timber.  That was all long gone but as I began to dig a couple of dig holes I was 'approached' by yellow jackets.  At first they just went to the bottom of the dig holes.  Then they started landing on my arms.  I didn't have any repellent and I tried to keep detecting.  Eventually they were getting behind my sunglasses and that was as much as I could take.  One stung me on my wrist and another one under my arm.  There was no where I could hunt over about a square mile area that they wouldn't soon show up.  I left.

I hate them worse than bees. 

me too!

[wes 75]

I have seen a lot of those meat bee underground paper nests this year in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  The bears or some other animals  digg them out at night and grub out on them!

[Terry Soloman 973]

Glad you are OK!!