Expat Community > Belize

mgammo
Joined 2016
Posts: 661

Africanized Bees

8 years ago

I don't want to bore ya'll with these tales, but this one is fairly informative.

One day, I had dispatched my man Fidi on an errand. He came back with a guy in the car and his bike was in the back with a flat tire.
The guy was a government bee inspector, like a pest control official. Fidi had picked him up on the side of the road and had come back to ask my permission to haul him to a reported bee sighting. The guy stepped out and put on a bee keeper type get up. I remember thinking, man, that is one skimpy get up. It had a head gear and a top and that was about it. We took off for a dusty back road in Paraiso village, We came upon a bicycle which was lying in the road. It was swarmed with some highly agitated bees. There was an angry cloud of bees hovering over head as well. Fidi said,' AY BOY! AFRICANIZED BEES!" The rider of the bike had somehow gotten transported to the hospital. The bee inspector sat there a minute then turned to me and said, I'm not getting out. I told him I didn't blame him. They had concluded those bees were vexed and railing up and I agreed.
So, we drove on a small piece and stopped. About that time, a tractor came passing by us. It had a driver and a man and a small boy hanging on the back of either side. I tried to holler at them but they couldn't hear me because of the tractor engine.They went on down the road and about two minutes later they came tearing back on foot swatting at their necks. Fidi told me not to open the car door. I had made up my mind if that little boy was in distress, I was going to snatch him up into my vehicle. I suspect Fidi suspected this.
They left that tractor running down by the downed bike and took off back up the road. As they went by us, another young man came up behind us on a bike. Some bees were buzzing around my car by now. Not a swarm thankfully. I cracked the window and Fidi was screaming at me. Mahm, do NOT roll it down. Well, I cracked it and screamed at the kid on the bike. Run Boy!. Africanized Bees!. I had never seen a human move so fast!. He fled back up that road as id the hounds of Hell were on his heels.
Well, one bee buzzed in through that cracked window. We were all swatting and carrying on ,until it lighted on Fidi's head, unbeknownst to him. I picked up my pocketbook and started crowing him over the head with it. He and the bee man looked horrified. I killed that bee and Fidi realized it when it fell in his lap.
Had this tale not had such a tragic ending it could have been rather comical. The poor guy who had been swarmed died later that evening at the hospital.
Apparently, most of those bee encounters happen down in the bush when the gangs of chop boys go out with their mashettes and clear out the brush under the power lines.
I will never forget that episode on the Paraiso Village road that day! I'm sure it had crossed that bee inspector's mind if his bike tire had not gone flat, he would have been swarm victim number two that day......

William Russell

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Africanized Bees

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