A “quick thinking” Arizona mother saved her two daughters from an angry swarm of stinging bees.
An unidentified mother and her two children were doing a family photo shoot in Maricopa County’s scenic Buckeye Valley, when a swarm of bees attacked them without provocation.
The mother acted fast and swiftly hauled her daughters to the family vehicle to protect them from the attacking insects, while taking the brunt of their more than 75 stings.
The Arizona Fire & Medical Authority posted a viral video of firefighters responding to the scene to help get the girls out of the car.
The girls’ grandmother’s frantic call to 911 can be heard in the audio of the video.
“Please hurry! Please hurry! My daughter can’t get in the car, she’s getting attacked by bees!” She urged 911 dispatchers. “My granddaughters are with her. Please send some help!”
Fully geared up firefighters responded with a special foam that they sprayed at the vehicle to deter the bees from continuing their attack.
Once the stinging insects were properly pacified, firefighters quickly grabbed the girls from the vehicle and ran them over to the fire truck.
The children’s mother was taken to a local hospital and treated for more than 75 stings, but has since recovered.
Across the country in Florida, a truck transporting around a million bees hit a semi-truck on Tuesday morning during a honey run, and released thousands of the insects onto an interstate.
Trent Padgett, the owner of Jesup Bee Company, said he ran into the tractor-trailer when the driver made a U-turn without bothering to signal early Tuesday morning.
“We both had a green light, but the semi-truck made a U-turn there without a turn signal, and I didn’t see it coming so I just hit right at the front end of the truck,” Padgett told a local news outlet.
“A lot of bees got lost. A lot of them flew away. There’s a lot of dead bees on the highway that came from those boxes.”
Padgett guessed that the company lost 25 to 30 hives worth of bees, which is estimated to cost the company between $40,000 to $80,000.
He hopes that the truck driver’s insurance will cover the costs, as he did not have bee loss insurance.
“He was at fault,” Padgett asserted “Hopefully, they’ll cover the damages. We’ll just have to negotiate.”
Unlike the bees from Arizona, the honey making insects were not aggressive, but swarmed around the crash site while bee keepers recovered the undamaged hives.
