A disabled man has been hospitalized after he was stung by more than 400 bees when a rogue swarm attacked several people in a southwest Las Vegas neighborhood.
The bees reportedly escaped from a nearby bee-keeper’s property last week, then swarmed residents of an assisted-living home, many of whom had limited mobility.
Louis Smith, 38, a resident of the facility, had to be taken to the hospital after he was stung more than 400 times.
His mother, Shelia Williams, told Fox5 News that doctors had told her he is far from out of the clear despite being released from the hospital.
“By the time the paramedics got there, Louis was fully covered with bees. They couldn’t even see his shirt,” Williams said.
Images and videos show the residents of the care home covered in marks from numerous bee stings.
“The doctor got on the phone and said, ‘Ma’am, this was a medical emergency,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because he got stung by over 400 bees,’” Williams said.
Fellow resident Robert Deviese was also attacked, and so were several staff members. Deviese, like Smith, also has limited mobility and said he was helpless as the bees stung him repeatedly.
“We went outside the gate, they started swarming Louis, and then they swarmed me. The fire department had to come hose us down,” he said.
According to Fox5, who spoke to the bee-keeping neighbor, he currently has six colonies, totalling more than 20,000 bees, which he has collected over the past eight years. He declined to give his name or be interviewed on camera.
Beekeeping in Las Vegas is not regulated, with keepers not required to hold any permit; however, they are supposed to post signage warning people about the location of the bees.
However, in other parts of Nevada, such as Clark County and parts of Nye and Lincoln counties, strict rules and quarantines are in place due to the presence of Africanized honey bees – also known as killer bees.
Killer bees are hybrids produced initially by crossbreeding of the African honey bee with various European honey bee subspecies, such as the Italian honey bee and the Iberian honey bee.
Typically, much more defensive than their European cousins, they are known to react to disturbances faster and chase people farther than other varieties of honey bees. They are blamed for the deaths of around 1,000 humans, with victims receiving 10 times as many stings as from European honey bees. They have also killed horses and other animals.
News of the bee attack in Las Vegas comes immediately after news of another attack in Arizona, in which children at a junior school taking part in a fire drill were swarmed by bees, leading to the discovery of a 70-pound killer bee nest on the edge of the school’s playing field.
In the U.S., bee sting season tends to run from spring through late fall, with the highest likelihood of stings from late summer to early fall. This is sometimes called "angry bee season" because bees and wasps become more aggressive as dwindling food sources prompt them to prepare for winter.
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