Posted on 09/15/2007 7:15:49 PM PDT by devane617
MISSION — When firefighters arrived, they found a man covered in bees.
“They were on him head to toe,” said Elias Saldivar, the Alton fire chief. His firefighters pulled the man away, suffering stings on their faces as they fought off attacks.
“The coat and pants only cover so much,” the chief said of his firefighters’ protective clothing.
Rescuers separated 57-year-old Paul Lee Campton from the bees, but it was too late.
Campton, a disabled man who uses a walker, died Thursday at Mission Regional Medical Center after being stung more than 1,000 times.
The attack happened about 6 p.m. Wednesday at a house just outside Mission on the south side of 6 Mile Line, just east of Bryan Road. Authorities said Campton and his brother, Lester Campton, 41, opened the garage door and were swarmed by as many as 1,000 bees.
Lester Campton escaped to a neighbor’s house and called for help. Alton firefighters arrived on the scene to find a thick, dark cloud of bees attacking the men.
As paramedics took Paul Lee Campton to the hospital, the bees followed after them, stinging emergency workers, Chief Saldivar said. No rescuer sustained serious injuries.
Paul Lee Campton died at 11:30 p.m. Thursday at Mission Regional Medical Center. His brother Lester was not seriously hurt.
Pest control workers later destroyed the majority of the bees, and authorities said they pose no further threat.
The Alton Fire Department has responded to about five less serious attacks so far this year. Larger cities in the Rio Grande Valley have also responded to such calls, fire officials said.
Many area cities have taken steps to prepare for these incidents. Alton, for example, has ordered new, sting-proof clothing, and McAllen equips rescue workers with bee suits to shield them from stings.
While firefighters won’t remove a hive from your backyard, they urge you to call if bees pose a mortal threat.
They will spray soap and water at the bees — whatever it takes to drive them away
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BEE CAREFUL
* Wear light-colored clothing while doing yard work; dark colors attract bees. * Search the yard for signs of bees before mowing; the noise irritates bees. * Know if you’re allergic to bee stings and talk to your doctor about antidotes; one sting can be deadly. * Don’t remove stingers with your fingers; doing so can spread the poison. Use a credit card to scrape stingers off the skin. Source: McAllen Fire Department, Lt. Rene Alaniz
The poor guy.
I can’t imagine a more horrid way to die except fire...
Did this happen in So. Cal. (Mission Valley)? If so, the bees were probably of the “killer” (Africanized) variety.
These stories are always very hard to read. Prayers for his family and loved ones.
Here is one from 2002:
9/30/02
Man dies after being stung by more than 200 bees
FORT WORTH, Texas - A Parker County man died after being stung more than 200 times by what officials identified as a colony of crossbred Africanized bees and honey bees.
Mike Cavanaugh, 56, was attacked on his tractor Sept. 16 while mowing a pasture in eastern Parker County. The bees had built a hive in one of the tires of an abandoned truck that Cavanaugh jarred while mowing.
Cavanaugh apparently struggled during the attack to return to his wheelchair, officials said. The former excavation worker had been partially paralyzed in a past horseback riding accident.
“He was covered from head to toe with bees,” his daughter, Ashley Cavanaugh, 19, of Azle, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Thursday editions.
Sorry, I should have posted the location as, “Mission, Texas.”
I’m sure these are Africanized bees.
We have a strain of Honey Bee here in Texas refered to as “Killer Bees.” They have slowly migrated north from South America during then past several years. I suspect these are the type bees that killed him.
Bees in Texas have also been Africanized; the entire Southwest is infested with them now.
In case anyone else was wondering, this is Texas,
so these could easily have been Africanized bees.
The original post mentioned no state.
The source article mentioned no state.
The paper’s home page mentioned no state
(but it was beginning to look like TX).
Had to hit the About>Contact page to confirm.
Yep...
Very sorry about not posting the location. As a big complainer of posts with no state, I should have known better.
Could you change the title to reflect the location as Texas. Thanks, and sorry.
Does anyone know where Alton is located. I linked to the article and it made one reference to McAllen, which could be in Texas. If it is in Texas, then the dreaded killer bees could certainly be the culprit. I think if I lived in a killer bee state, I would always carry a large plastic yard waste bag with me. Have it ready to open up, curl in a ball and cover myself entirely until rescued.
I was once at a camp out a 4 mile hike to the nearest road. I young women with bee allergy was stung by 2 yellow jackets in the neck and shoulder. She had forgotten to pack her allergy kit. When I came upon the scene where people were trying to help her, her eyes were swollen shut, her body was puffy all over, and she was having trouble breathing. I immediately gave her 20 grams of Vitamin C that they had in the First Aid tent. In a half hour she could open her eyes, the puffiness had subsided considerable, and she could breathe adequately. I stayed with her for six more hours, giving her 5 or 10 gm. of Vitamin C every hour. I also gave her several anti-oxident or antihistaminic vitamins, I don’t remember which, in moderate quantities. Finally I left her and a friend with the Vitamin C bottle and told her to take more if her symptoms started to get worse. The next day she was gone. I was told she had been able to hike out.
A Dr. Klenner in North or South Carolina (?) had great success with using very large doses of Vitamin C for snake bite, black widow spider bite, etc. That is where I got the idea.
***Don’t tell the EPA, but a bottle of chlorine poured into their nest at night usually takes care of them.***
If I had to take a chemistry exam, I would probably get a minus everything grade. So tell me, are you talking about chlorine beach?
The firefighters and pest control personnel are likely to get sued by the environmental nutjobs for destroying something nature put here and man should have interfered with them. ACLU and Greenpeace will be contacting the involved agencies for their black mail monies.
Affirmative.
What this means is that she’ll throw some percentage of daughters with half African genetics. I remember finding some African traits in some hives ten years ago. Now, mind you, this is a small percentage, but the traits are there.
Once, I got out of my truck a full fifty feet away from the yard I was going to inspect and a guard came directly at me and stung me on the forehead just like a rifle shot. Another trait is their tendency to home in on sting sites and repeatedly sting the same area. One other trait is their tendency to follow you long after you have closed up the hive and moved on. Africanized bees will follow you forever. I often just let them get into the cab with me and bang against the windows.
They’re her-r-r-r-r-r-r-re!
Wonder what they'll charge for that?
YIKES!
I’ll bet she never leaves home without her Epi Pen again! Good advice about the Vitamin C.
They’ll never colonize as far north as I live, but as long as queens come up from the South, the traits will be present to some degree. I’m not complaining, though, just noting the changes over 30 years.
I also remember my father whooping my butt after the family picked
off all the hornets. And that hurt!
Why didn't they say what type of Bees they were? I hope this isn't
part of a PC agenda to spare the locals from African Bees.
/Salute
I was stung by a bee today, as it happens, so I know how much it hurts.
Unfortunately, there was probably nothing that could have been done to prevent this. Bees have no free will. When instinct tells them “attack”, they attack.
It’s always a good idea to keep an eye open for swarming bees at this time of year. As they travel in search of a new hive, they are on hair-trigger alert against predators. If you notice a bee swarm in your neighborhood, don’t approach it. Call a professional apiarist (beekeeper) to come and capture the bees. The fire department is not equipped to handle bees, and an exterminator will kill them, which would be a waste of good bees.
May God bless this poor man.
Also the article says “swarmed by bees”, but honeybees when swarming are pretty docile. Swarming is how hives reproduce. A bunch of bees in mass attack is a mass attack. A bunch of bees flying or making a big group around a queen is a swarm, and they are looking for a new home and are very unlikely to attack.
“Swarming bees” is one of those media inaccuracies like “point blank range” that’s guaranteed to irritate me.
On the other hand the advice given about not wearing dark clothes and watching for nests or hives is OK.
Prayers for the man and his family. What a terrible thing, be it yellowjackets or honeybees.
Just want to know what the best method for bee removal.
question: how do you pour chlorine on a nest without getting attacked?
And can you subsitute a small nuclear weapon?
Do it at night. And be very careful. ;O)
20 grams of Vitamin C is a lot, was this orally or intravenous?
Sad sad. RIP.
Spray soap and water? How about a flame thrower.
Answer = most aren't effective. I have paid exterminators $200+ for failed attempts at what I can how accomplish for $1.65. Does that answer your question, smart ass?
The vitamin C was given orally. We were in the middle of the woods. By they time I went back to my tent I had given her around 50 grams. Dr. Klenner reported successfully giving 50 grams to people bitten by rattlesnakes and black widow spiders. I think he may have used intravenous forms. I started with 20 to be on the safe side, however, the swelling would start to get worse after an hour, so I would give another 5 or 10 grams and it would subside after 15 or 20 minutes. You can use the presence or absence of symptoms to callibrate the dose. My advice is if you are going into snake country or have bee allergy, always carry a bottle of 1000 milligram C tablets, this is the same as 1 gram.
These bees were not hornets or yellow jackets. Yellow jackets are indeed agressive especially this time year, but there dens only hold a few dozen individuals. Texas has the Africanized bees which are intensely aggressive. The stinger of a honey bee rips out and kills the bee, so they are reluctant to sacrifice their lives. The African bees do not lose their stinger and can sting again and again.
For those who do not know the story, researchers in Brazil about 30 years ago were trying to cross African bees with honey bees because the African bees had a higher honey yield. A few were let loose or escaped and they have been spreading Northward ever since. They are now in the warmer areas of the US. Apparently they are sensitive to cold. Let’s hope we don’t get globally warmed or we will have them in the north too.
See my post #30.
Great minds think alike.
People will use just about anything to kill these things with. I am a PMT (Pest Management Tech) and you would be amazed at how many people will pour gasoline into the ground to kill these things. As far as africanized bees, PMTs are using Dawn dishsoap in 50 gal tanks to kill them. It knocks them down quicker than anything and I can’t think of a better reason than that to use it.
I use the mint spray (Poison Free brand) to kill wasps or bees actively attacking a horse, either while I’m on the horse or the horse is in the pasture. If they put Dawn in an aerosol can I could use it to kill flying insects or clean camp dishes.
The cheapest I have ever done some killing is when I raised bees and one of the hives got some bad breeding & went berserk. Shop vacuumed out the entire hive of the little rascals.
when dealing with bees, hornets, yellow jackets, etc... do everything at night. They settle down at night and are all in the hive. Doing it at night almost always gives the best chance for getting all the insects in one fell swoop.
“Know if you’re allergic to bee stings...”
About 3 weeks ago my father-in-law, who lives with us was on the deck in his wheelchair when bees attacked. We got him in quickly, and we were all stung. He is allergic to bee stings. I quickly made a paste of Bentonite clay and we put it on the stings, his and ours. The venom was quickly absorbed by the clay and he had no reaction, none of us had lingering irritation from the stings.
We do not know what kind of bees - it’s the first time this has happened to us here. My wife was attacked again a couple days later. She did not apply the Bentonite clay paste and experienced swelling and pain - the swelling lasted about 36 hrs.
We are in Ohio, btw, about 50 miles south of downtown Cleveland.
Don’t tell me that Alton is the new hot resort for the Colony Collapse community...
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