It’s the last week in April which can only mean one thing. It’s time for the monthly recap of bees in the news.
April has been a heartbreaking month for bee news. Early on in the month came the saddest bee story I have ever come across. It took place in Arizona. A woman went out for a jog with her twin toddlers when she was attacked by a swarm of bees. The panic of the bee attack sent the woman and her twin boys into a canal along side the jogging path. The woman survived but her boys (who were attached to a double stroller) weren’t recovered until it was way too late. A GoFundMe site has been set up for the family to help pay for medical costs and a memorial.
Arizona seemed to have an unusually high number of bee attacks in April. All four campuses of Arizona State University issued several bee alerts warning students, warning them to take caution. Another Arizona incident occurred when several Hikers were stung (and one man was sent to the hospital) at Pinnacle Peak Hiking Trail.
The high number of bee attacks in Arizona may be due to the high percentage of Africanized bees. To be fair, San Diego also has it’s fair share of Africanized bees, but we seem to have fewer attacks. Some participants of The San Diego Beekeeping Society have posited that feral bees here in San Diego, may have become less defensive as a direct result of our backyard beekeeping hobbyists.
Arizona is not the only state that had sad bee news in April. Washington State had one of the most widely talked about bee stories this month. It’s was what people were referring to on twitter as #BEENADO. Words can not begin to describe this terrible incident. The photos really tell it all. They reveal the devastation that occured when a truck carrying 448 hive boxes tipped over onto a major highway. Attempts were made to recover some of the hives, but overall it was pretty much a total loss.
There is no doubt that April was a sad month for bee news. There is one story, however, that I can share to end this blog post on a more positive note. It’s a clip of a really cool cop in Oregon performing a bee rescue. Thank you Lt. Robert Obenauf for saving the bees and giving us at least one happy bee news story this month!
