2 Dogs Killed When Hundreds Of Bees Attack

A swarm of bees that terrorized a Florida neighborhood has killed three dogs and injured a 70-year-old woman. Authorities in Palm Beach County say crews removed 50 pounds of honeycomb from the side of a Riviera Beach home after Friday's attack. The hive has been contained.... - lvn

"The critter control is hauling away the honeycomb material," said Riviera Beach Fire Rescue Division Chief Russ Elgin. "We're given the understanding that once the material is moved and the queen bee is gone, the residual bees will move in or die off."

It's good news for the neighborhood, but it's too late for the Tucker family.The family said the bees killed two of their dogs -- 3-year-old Diamond and 2-year-old Turk."I would say hundreds of them, and I just didn't know how many because you didn't see them all," Shronderlette Davis-Tucker said. "But when they were swarming all over the area, it was something from a horror movie."The dogs were attacked Friday afternoon, Davis-Tucker said. She said she was inside the house at the time, and then all of a sudden she heard her son yelling."He ran in and said, 'Mom, the bees are attacking Diamond,'"
Davis-Tucker said. She said she quickly got Diamond inside and then the bees starting attacking her. "The bees got all on me," she said. "We ran into the shower because I knew to try the water, so I got her in the shower and we were just getting the bees off."

... Tucker said she spent about $800 trying to save her dogs, but she's hoping the owner of the property where the beehive was will help with the expense. - wpfb

Sad for the dogs. Dogs and bees have co-existed for a long time. I guess if both are territorial we know the outcome. Most bees will just ignore you unless you are freaking out, or unless they are defending their hive.  If they attack, run. Leave the area quickly. Open the doors and encourage the dogs to run for it.

Don't stick around and try to get bees off in the shower. Most bees will get themselves off just fine if you just stay out of the shower and instead use the back door.  Most people have one. I don't really know, because I wasn't there, of course. Perhaps getting the bees off that way was the all she could do because her back door was blocked up or something. This is the key:

Regular honeybees will chase you about fifty yards. Africanized honeybees may pursue you three times that distance. - wikihow

I speculate that this is why, in schools, back when physical education still mattered to Americans, they used to have something called, "the 50 yard dash" -- you only need to get 150 feet away from where the attack started (450 feet if attacked by Africanized bees.) The average human can walk 3 miles per hour. One mile is 5280 feet. That translates to 88 feet per minute, therefore, even if you could not run, you could escape from normal bees in two minutes by walking away.

Most people can run 6 miles per hour, so you'd be out of there in one minute with regular bees.  It takes about 1,100 honeybee stings to kill a human. Africanized bees if you are right up in their nest, will manage to sting you about 200 times in one minute.  Don't swat at them, don't freeze up, don't jump in a pool (they will be waiting for you when you surface), get away from the area.  You will survive.