So I thought I'd get a quick dove hunt in. First bird came in, one shot one bird. I walked around to retrieve him and I heard a distant buzzing sound. At first I thought electrical and then running water. I got to thinking that it sounded a lot like a giant swarm of bees but brushed it off a bit. This sound is no more that 100 yards from me. The sound started heading north through the trees I believe and I thought maybe a electric powered 4 wheeler. I walked about 20 yards and suddenly started getting attacked. It wasn't many. I believe I caught some stragglers but was stung about 5 times. These were much bigger than the usual honey bees. About 3 times the size. They finally quit attacking me but I could still hear the swarm even about 3 hundred yards away. When I got back to my truck I met up with another hunter. I asked him where he was hunting and he was right in the path of where they were headed. I told him what happened and asked if he heard them. He said yes, but he thought it was a 4 wheeler and it was approaching dark. I'm assuming he was thinking like me and thought electric 4 wheeler. This was in the fields where you enter at Cleveland Gibbs. Please please be careful. If you hear the buzzing sound and you cant make out the sound... get the hell out immediately. This is a very large group of killer bees. I will call the Rangers tomorrow to let them know.

Wow, I can not run fast anymore. They would've had a field day with me.

Not killer bees as they are the same size. Probably a swarm of ground hornets. Or an underground hive of Africans and they just seemed bigger when they were biting you!
Either way that sucks for sure.

Same here. I was very lucky to have caught a few stragglers and not the whole swarm. I can tell you this too. I'm not allergic to much of anything and have very little reaction to stings at best. These dudes have left lumps on me and I have a little stiffness.

Huntwest, I'll take your word for it. I'm no expert by no means. It's the only explanation I could come up with

I know they are no joke.

Lost a dog last year do to africanized bees. We had them build a hive on the 2nd floor of the house.

Like a fool I put the latter up there, climbed up and started spraying.

Shimmed down the later like i was on a Navy ship in WWII. Was standing on the other side of the street and still got stung.

Needless to say I called in a bee remover and got my education.

Honey bees like their hives close to the ground. The more aggressive African bees like their high up. They really don't produce honey but just enough to feed the hive. They then seek out other hives and take over.

Burn them all with fire.

Glad you're ok.

I have had them fly by me before but never attack. Can hear them with hearing protection on. I was banging metal in the ground that must have attracted them.

I have a friend who has a ranch in NW Gillespie county who had Africanized Honey Bees on his place last year in a tree. He had a dozer and operator working over July 4th weekend when he hit a hollow tree with some other brush he was pushing. No cab on the dozer and they came after him. He was a younger man so he was able to run and about 600 yards later they finally stopped attacking him. He had just over 100 stings and they took him to ER to be checked and he was fine. They called a bee man out of the Brownwood area to come down on the holiday and get rid of them. When the operator and landowner were taking him to the location the bee man told the operator to stay back. He said the bees would know his scent and come after him again. He said they were definitely Africanized and he was seeing more and more his his area. He killed them all and cut down the tree into small pieces. They had to wait 2 days for the stragglers to die. I have a video shot by the bee man and his son of them swarming on them as they worked on cutting down the tree and killing the bees. It was intense and you could see the stingers on their bee suits.

I have more trouble with the what we call "ground hornets". They are a little smaller than honey bees but are 10 times meaner. I have hit them several time while dozing and the dozer isn't fast enough to outrun them. Even our native honey bees are pretty aggressive when you get too close to one of their hives in a tree. They are nothing like the domesticated bees people use for honey.

These got me two years ago now when I was mowing the grass around the house and sheds. Mowed around them for 3 yrs and never knew they were there in that old smoker. 3rd pass the lit me up on this day in June. Bit me 10-12 times on the neck, ears and top of my head thru the hole in the back of my ball cap. You can not outrun them with a zero-turn. The chased me into the barn and then into the house. After about 20 minutes I could finally shut off the mower. I could not find anyone to get them and I had to kill them that night. The worst I have got stung was when I kicked a tuff of grass and the air exploded with those Black and Yellow Bumble Bees. They will chase you a long ways also.

My kids school just had a tree taken down. There were over 1 million bees in it 30 feet up. No wonder they would swarm cokes on games day. Amazing they didn't bother anyone all those years.

We got attacked by something one summer in East Texas we had a lease that was near the middle of the Davy Crockett NF, went to put up a stand in a creek bottom with my buddy and our girlfriends at the time, I had a little trailer that I pulled behind my 3 wheeler with ladder stand on it, me and buddy went through the creek and up the other side with my 3 wheeler and the girls had stopped to p so they were coming through the creek on 4 wheeler while we were standing at the tree we were putting the stand at (200 yds), all of a sudden, they came flying up out of the creek screaming and waving their arms & running. They ran up to us yelling and swatting but me and my buddy couldn't see them they were so fast, then one stung my eyelid (sob that hurt!) we took off running into a thick area of small pines and they finally left us alone. Both girls were stung 20+ times and we had 5 or 6 each. We walked the girls back up to the truck and they went back to camp and to town to get Benadryl, we walked back down and got the stand put up. Waited several hours before retrieving the atv's and when we did, we made a new trail coming out of there that became a great shortcut to that blind. Never could find were they came from. Looked like honey bees but fast and mean.

This is terrifying lol, rather a bear than bees

I had one on my forarm that I actually saw, but I was flapping my arms and swatting with my cap to get a good look. I know it was larger than a regular honey bee and was extremely aggressive. I had already been stung on the back of my head. Again, I've been stung a many of times in my life, and the sting areas are usually gone in a hour or so Although these guys did not hurt like a wasp the stings are a bit swollen and sore this morning. I even have a little stiffness in my neck and shoulder on the side I was sting. It hit me just above my hair line.

�African honey bees cannot be distinguished from European honey bees easily, although they are slightly smaller than the various European races.�

If you are for sure it was larger than a regular honey bee I�m thinking it�s ground hornets or bumblebees.....What color were they? Any bright yellow patterns?

Agree with Huntwest, no way it was a honey bee if it was that size, drones can be much bigger, but they are the minority in the hive and don't have a stinger so...

Don't always assume they are "Africanized", any bee can get pissy with the right stimulus/circumstances and you can almost always get someone to come get them with a simple craiglist add, or similar.

My dad had hives in about 4-5 different locations back home in La. I was of course the non-compensated hired help. Most locations we could walk-in with just a hood and not really be bothered, a couple we had to fully suit up as they were just plain hornery all the time. While it was hard work, honeybees are interesting to understand/work with.

I'm thinking several of these stories are hornets, not honeybees.

Hitting bee hives happens fairly regularly when clearing brush. I�ve ran into them several times over the years, in fact hit one 2 days ago. Luckily I was in an excavator with an enclosed cab so I just kept working. they settled down after a few hours. Native honey bees I�m sure as I�ve been able to work around them since with no issues.

But in the past I�ve ran into them on open cab dozers, and I�ve seen another operator stung many times. Luckily I�ve always been able to bail and run away with minimal stings but it�s sure no fun.

Worst incident I got hit about 10 times, and had to run about a 1/4-1/2 mile before I lost them. These were very aggressive and stay agitated for days. We had to get a bee handler in to remove them to finish the job. He said they were Africanized. These days I really appreciate an enclosed cab when in brush...

I bought an old construction office trailer for my deer lease in Breckenridge a while back and the the bees built a hive underneath behind the fabric and decided I needed to do something. So I put on my cold weather gear and facemask and went in after dark when they were in the hive and blasted them with wasp spray I can't remember which but I unloaded 2 cans into their lair and ran inside thinking I had survived, and turned around and they were everywhere in the trailer. I turned and saw they were buzzing around the lights and it was on! I sprayed, stomped, and over about 45 minutes killed every one of them. After that I looked into it more and determined that I needed to use a fumigator (I think RAID recommended to me at home depot) but it involves putting the fumigator under the hole in the fabric and let it rise into the hive and it would find its way through the hive and kill them all! So I waited for a morning when below freezing, got dressed for the hunt, and set it on an upside down trash can just below the opening. I had to drop two elements together and it started generating fumes that made their way throughout the hive. Jumped in the truck and when I returned there were no bees whatsoever. A little scary while I was the only one at camp but it did the trick!

Just a little tip about Honey bee's both species. If a bee bumps you in the face immediately stop what your doing and look around for the hive, then back out. They tend to do this as a warning. Both species lose their stingers when they sting so a sting for them is fatal. I've been bumped a few times on the ranch and every time there was a hive close by.

I know the feeling Charlie lol, being a "grunt" at an apiary. My younger years we had tons of hives and sold honey commercially throughout the mid states out of N Arkansas, mostly to chain stores like Piggly Wiggly if you recall those. Dabble in them now just for memories sake and it is fun and relaxing at times.

A lot has changed with new threats to bees and their survival is poor, sucks to see them killed just because they are a "bee", they disappear and folks will wonder where the food shortage came from. I also beleive in killing a high percentage AHB if they are truley mean because of that trait and no other stimuli, in an apairy, you would pinch the the queen and get a gentler genetic queen, bit harder in the wild, but there are many people in bees and many more getting into bees that will take them most of the time.

I do remember re-queening the hives. The lady we went to for the queens had a hive setup against a living window with some kind of clear pathway to a viewing station setup inside of her house. Boiling the honey via vacuum if our moisture content was too high, trying to move a 55 gallon of honey by myself. Dang, those things were heavy! We sold all of our honey to the USDA.

Oh yeah, observation hive, we had one at school when I was young, grandad probably supplied that. I loved eating honey comb, but hated when I was the kid chosen to cut the squares, talk about a mess, usually ended up being the one putting on labels and that was boring as hell, big kids got the "funner' stuff lol

In 1972 I was in the 10th grade/sophomore did a report for my science class on the African Honey Bees when they were still in South America. Vague memory of the report, I do remember that Scientist brought them to S. America and they escaped the lab. It was interesting on their projections of how far they would travel through Mexico and eventually to the United States.

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.