Do this when bees attack you

I have read about and experienced a fair amount of bee “attacks” in the past few weeks.

One in the Huisgenoot led to a victim being kept in the hospital – a virtual “vegetable”.

In many of these cases these poor people tried to escape the bees by getting into a body of water, such as a swimming pool or river.

I would like to strongly advise that you never do this, as the bees know that you need air and will attack immediately when come up for air.

One takes a deep breath when you come up and are in danger of swallowing a bee or more, who then can sting you in the mouth and throat, which could be fatal.

Try instead to run away, preferably through some vegetation (bushes or trees with lots of small branches) which not only helps to knock the bees off, but also puts distance between you and the rest of the bees.

If you can, get into a car and wind up the windows, as this makes the bees claustrophobic and you will see that they try and get out – leaving you alone.

You then can drive away and open the windows a little bit, which then allows the bees to go out of the car.

Another problem occurs when you are safe but want to remove the stings.

Never pull the stings out with your fingers as you will just squeeze the poison into the skin.

Rather scrape them off you with a finger nail or a knife or even a nail file.

You only have about 30 seconds to do this or the poison will already have been drawn into your body.

If you have had many stings and have to go to the hospital, you will see the nurse or doctor using tweezers, but by this time the stings have no poison left so it does not matter how they are removed.

Please note that bees do not attack without provocation.

You may not have done anything, but the person that threw the rock or who tried to steal the honey is long gone and some innocent person gets into trouble.

Our bees will protect their hive up to a 500m radius and that means that a large area with pets and unsuspecting people are subject to the bees wrath!

I am not a doctor, but have found that to put an antihistamine tablet under the tongue helps, especially if the person can’t swallow, and then if necessary, take the patient to the hospital or doctor.

Note as well, to open the windows a bit to get the bees out of the vehicle as nobody is going to help if you arrive at the emergency with a car full of angry bees.

I hope that this will help if you are ever confronted with a swarm of bees.

It is very important to differentiate between an angry swarm and a migrating swarm.

The former is on a stinging spree and the latter are so mild in manner that you can actually put your hand into the bunch of bees without being stung (do not try this), but it is just to show the difference.

If anyone says: “We will just smoke the bees and get rid of them” then they do not know what they are doing as bees will not react in any way to smoke if they are angry.