Africanized honey bee. Photograph by Jeffrey W. Lotz/Insect Images
An elderly Californian woman has survived a vicious attack from a swarm of Africanized “killer” bees, having suffered over 1,000 stings.
The 71-year-old woman was reportedly fully covered in bees when firefighters arrived on the scene in Palm Desert at around 16:40 local time (23:40 GMT).
The victim was visiting relatives and had just got out of her car when the swarm of more than 75,000 bees descended on her according to the Press-Enterprise.
The woman was quickly covered in a blanked and rushed inside to get away from the swarm, before being rushed to hospital having gone into shock. She is expected to make a full recovery.
It was a Verizon employee checking on a neighbour’s cable box that disturbed the hive, causing the bees to get into a frenzy and attack a number of people on the street.
Authorities called in a local expert to smoke out the bees, before hoovering them up and taking them to a hive for use by farmers for crop pollination.
A video of the bees can be seen below:
