Last Wednesday was just another day for Valerie McCulley, 72, of Scenic.

Like many who live in the small Arizona community some 10 miles north of Mesquite, McCulley keeps a garden, raises chickens and goats, and maintains a honey bee hive.

It was about time to harvest honey last week, a project she does every few months, so she put on her protective bee suit and veil, and went out to her small desert backyard to take care of business.

As she smoked the hive so she could remove the honey, her day erupted into chaos. The normally docile bees began pouring aggressively from the side of the hive.

Ignoring her instincts, she nonetheless opened the box to get to the honey when the thousands of bees began to attack.

“My very first thought when I realized there were lots of them on top of me was, ‘I could die from this,’” McCulley said.

The bees swarmed McCulley and began stinging her over and over again, some of them multiple times. Bees even made their way inside her veil to sting her face and neck.

Although she didn’t know it until later, her normally gentle honey bee hive had been taken over by an aggressive African variety, changing its very nature.

McCulley’s daughter, Trudy Bevan, 56, watching from the fence, rushed to her mother’s side and began blindly grabbing and pulling off fistfuls of bees. She screamed for help from Sheryl Webster, 59, who also lives on the property.

Unaware of what the problem was, Webster, who is allergic to bees, raced to help. She had barely turned the corner of the house when she, too, was attacked by a swarm of angry, violent bees.

Meanwhile, McCulley ran into the house, tearing off her protective veil and running water over her head from the kitchen sink to get the bees off and out of her hair.

Webster, who was still outside being attacked, said the bees made their way into her blouse and were furiously stinging her. In a panic she ran, stripping off her clothes, desperate to escape the bees.

“I knew I was going to die,” Webster said.

Webster fell and Bevan threw a blanket over her in an attempt to protect her. McCulley ran from the house with an Epi Pen to inject Webster with epinephrine but was unsuccessful.

“It was like watching someone burn to death and you can’t do anything,” Bevan said.

Bevan called the Beaver Dam Fire Department and Scenic General Store owner, Damon Jackson, heard the call over the radio. He shut down the store and rushed to help.

Jackson, captain of the Beaver Dam Fire Department, is also a paramedic.

When he arrived he saw there were thousands of swarming bees. Webster, who had managed to get into the house, was on the floor. Covered in swelling bee stings, her airway was rapidly closing. Jackson administered an EpiPen to Webster.

He said McCulley was unable to inject the fallen woman because she had failed to remove the safety mechanism on the EpiPen. Thankfully, he got to Webster just in time. Had there been a longer delay, she might have died.

Webster had alerted 911 and both women were taken by ambulance to Mesa View Regional Hospital.

Littlefield schools were also notified not to drop children off in the area because of the bees.

While lying in a hospital bed, McCulley recalled being stung a few months ago while harvesting honey but she thought nothing of it. Even docile honey bees sometimes sting, she said.

However, a short time later the sting became swollen and painful and she thought then the bee must have been an African bee.

She has no bee allergies but became worried about the sting, so she went to the hospital then as well.

While the ambulance was transporting the injured women, Bevan called Darrell Garlyck from Virgin Acres in Beaver Dam from whom McCulley had purchased the hive last year.

Garlyck arrived and was instantly assailed by bees.

He said he knew right away they were a type of African bees because of their aggressiveness. He had to leave and come back with a suit. Even then the bees climbed up his pant legs and got under his veil and stung his face.

He spent the next hour and a half torching the hive to rid the property of the aggressive African bee.

Doctors removed 200 stingers from Webster’s hair alone, and many more from her face, arms, neck, chest, stomach and legs. Each woman was stung hundreds of times. McCulley’s bee suit was covered in stingers and yellowish venom left by the bees stinging through her suit.

Bevan was stung, too, but not as many times and she has had no adverse reaction to the stings.

Garlyck torched thousands of bees, including whatever was left of the honeybees, leaving piles of dead bees littering the ground.

African bees are slightly smaller than European honeybees but have drastically different personalities.

Garlyck said African bees are the ideal honeybee, except for their aggressiveness.

African honeybees can do everything a regular honeybee can do faster and better. A queen African honey bee can lay up to 4,000 eggs a day, 105,000 a year. A European honeybee can only lay 2,500 a day, 58,000 per year.

African honeybees take over European honeybees hives by killing the queen and moving in. Research shows an African bee will wait 14 seconds before stinging while the average European bee will wait 229 seconds, more than three minutes. The African bee will also chase a victim up to 160 meters where a European bee is only willing to go 22 meters.

McCulley said since she can’t be sure the African bees won’t come back, she won’t invest in a hive again. She said telling the story of the attack brought her close to tears.

The women warn the community African bees are “out there” and are extremely dangerous. They said to be prepared and stay away if you hear or see any bees.

They believe McCulley and Webster would have died without the help of the Beaver Dam Fire Department.

Submitted on 10/16/2013

Submitted by: Dave
Reference: http://www.thespectrum.com/viewart/20131014/DVTONLINE01/310140009/African-bees-attack-Scenic-women

Copyright © 2013 DarwinAwards.com

Candi said:
Definitely Toss: Other
Sorry, Dave, but this doesn't qualify on two counts. There was no way of immediately knowing the African hybrids were in possession of the hive (they look virtually identical to full honey bees without a *really* close look), and the daughter was trying to help her mother. Trying to help someone in trouble is never a Darwin. Thanks anyway, and submit again!

Bruce said:
Definitely Toss: Other
As Candi said.

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