Police responding to a single bee sting report get attacked by a swarm of 40,000

Updated: 4:22 PM PST Feb 21, 2020

By Francisco Guzman and Saeed Ahmed, CNN

Nearly 40,000 bees shut down a California block and sent five people to the hospital. SOURCE: Pasadena Fire Department

CNN —
They were responding to a report of a bee sting. But their problem was about to get a whole lot worse.

Firefighters and police were attacked Thursday afternoon by a swarm of nearly 40,000 Africanized bees.

Three of the first responders were rushed to the hospital, while the others quickly shut down the block.

"I've been with the fire department 18 years now and responded to several bee incidents," Pasadena Fire Department public information officer Lisa Derderian told CNN. "But never to this magnitude."

A block full of bees

The bees stung seven people in total, but two of them didn't go to the hospital, authorities said.

No one got it worse than the first firefighter who arrived. The bees stung him 17 times.

Eventually, first responders realized that the swarm of bees covered the entire block.

"The bees were very aggressive," Derderian said. "Somebody could have had an allergic reaction and it could have been serious and/or fatal." Firefighters and a professional beekeeper climbed a ladder to remove the hive, which was on the roof of a four-story Hampton Inn. They then sprayed the bees with CO2 and foam extinguishers.

Some of the bees were killed, while others left the area when the sun went down, she said.

The beekeeper safely removed the hive so that the bees could not return home.

Poster Comment:

I was a beekeeper in Illinois. When I moved to Missouri I could not take the hives with. There was another beekeeper nearby that took them over.