Killer beesKiller bees send six to hospital in Arizona

Killer bees docile when not threatened // Source: ufl.edu

The Maricopa, Arizona fire department said six people were hospitalized on Saturday afternoon after a swarm of bees attacked residents in the Rancho El Dorado subdivision.

The bees swooped down on residents of a two-block area in the subdivision about 5 p.m. Both kids and adults ran screaming for cover.

Medics with the fire department said that three adults and three children had to be taken to hospital for treatment. Fox News reports that one of the adults had nearly 300 bee stings counted at the hospital. Two firefighters who were also stung during the rescue did not need treatment at the hospital, the department said.

Fire crews wearing protective gear took about two hours to find the hive in an opened water valve box at one of the homes. The bees were sprayed with foam, and the hive was contained and killed.

This past summer parts of Arizona were threatened by an especially aggressive type of honeybee, and some people getting stung so many times that had to be hospitalized.

Experts say the bees are a strain of the Africanized honeybee, also known as the killer bee, which is a crossbreed between the European honeybee and the African honeybee.

The killer bee is the result of experiments conducted in Brazil decades ago. Hundreds of bees escaped the labs where the experiments were conducted, formed hives, and migrated to the United States. The bees can be found in most states, but are more prevalent in the warm south-western states such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

The bees typically keep to themselves and go about their business, but if their hives are disrupted, they become exceedingly aggressive and form large swarms which attack anything they consider as menacing.