Was fishing with a buddy in a jon boat on his place North of Bonham when we heard a loud hum. Started getting louder and louder and then they appeared. HUGE swarm about the size of a house... must have been millions. Some of them were falling out of the sky and landing on the water (and us) as they moved by overhead. We talked about jumping out and flipping the boat over, but they were moving on pretty good. It was a real sight to see.

Also anytime you might accidentally upset a hive they will usually attack. African or not.
Wild bees are more protective of their hives than domestic.
Just be careful as there are plenty of wild hives in Texas. Both European bees and Africanized.
I have two hives of Africanized bees that are great producers but I have to wear a full bee suit to work with them.
Africans also really like to hive in ground and under storage sheds. European bees will usually hive high up in a tree and never underground.
The Africans make honey really fast, they also will rob honey from friendly European bees.

Also a swarm of bees or a huge amount flying together are harmless even Africans. They only get mean and attack when defending a hive.

That is right on. A warning bump usually in the forehead is the tell tale.

Sounds to me like a lot of these stories are actually attacks from True Yellow Jackets. Not the kind we all grew up calling yellow jackets which are actually paper wasps. Yellow jackets live in the ground or inside planter boxes, etc. They live in HUGE colonies and are extraordinarily aggressive but they are smaller than normal bees. We pulled into the lake house a couple of years ago and saw an area of the ground that looked like it was moving. We got out to check it out and didn't get within 20 yards of them before they attacked and one stung my wife on the neck.

This is also the most common time of year they do their thing preparing to go underground for the winter.

^^Could be. We have a bee tree on our place. These critters are very nervous and aggressive. Not your normal calm, Itallian honeybees.A guy in Granbury died after being attacked a few years ago.

Could they be bumble bees?

I've ran over their hives with a tractor pulling a brush hog and they do get excited!
The laps I was cutting took about 5 minutes for a complete round.
1st pass went right by the nest - a few stirred but had mostly settled by time I came back around,
next pass went directly over the nest - that woke them up for sure,
next pass looked like smoke coming out of the ground and they hit me hard just as I realized what they were!

Only got stung 6-7 times on exposed head, neck and hands but those things looked HUGE when right in front of your face.

Yeah, a bump is a warning shot over the bow, some entomologist theorize they mark you with an alarm pheromone, they sure do mark you if you get stung and you can smell the "bananay" odor, then it's "tag you're it!"

We had these in Maryland we called them yellow jackets their a type.of small.hornet and have big paper nests either in the ground or in trees and their very aggressive and can sting more than once. Also now those asian Hornets are moving in their not really aggressive but have massive stingers, they looked similar to cicada killers but arent black their more yellow.and live in big hives we had them show up on the east coast in the late 90s know one had every seen them before at least that's what our family said now theirs nat.Geos about them.

No, these are different. You can whack a wasp nest and run a bit and go back and whack again. Go find my wasp thread. Killer bee's chase, attack and don't stop. Regular bees are docile and good.