Africanised bees attack sleeping mom, children

May 07, 2009 News

– husband hospitalised, animals killed

Yvonne Abrams and her two sons

A West Bank Demerara woman and her two small sons narrowly escaped serious injury on Tuesday after a swarm of Africanised bees attacked them as they slept in an outdoor hammock.
Yvonne Abrams, 32, of L’Oratoire, Canal Number One Polder, awoke to find herself and her year-old son “covered with bees”.
She managed to flee from her yard and seek refuge in a friend’s house.
But her husband, Robert Abrams, a 41-year-old shopkeeper, was badly stung while shielding one of the children from the swarm.

He was admitted to the West Demerara Regional Hospital after suffering from fits of vomiting and swelling of the face and upper body.
Mrs. Abrams was treated for stings to the head and face, while her one-year-old son was stung on the leg.
Four of the couple’s dogs and a sheep succumbed to bee stings.
The Abrams family said that the bees have been nesting in a next door neighbour’s ceiling for several years.
Her face still slightly swollen, Yvonne Abrams recalled that she, along with her five- year-old and one-year-old sons, was sleeping in a backyard hammock around 14:30hrs on Tuesday when the ‘killer’ bees struck.

She was jolted from sleep when her ‘baby’ son began to scream.
“When I jump up, I see a whole swarm of bees on me and the baby,” she said.
Mrs. Abrams immediately grabbed her two children and fled to the front of the house.
“All I could do was ‘hook’ the five-year-old to the front and scream ‘bees, bees.’”
But according to the woman the swarm pursued her.
Abrams’s husband, who was in his shop, shielded his five-year-old son from the insects, while dragging his wife to the roadway and to a friend’s house a short distance away.
In doing this, he bore the brunt of the bees’ wrath.
After ensuring his wife was safe, Mr. Abrams returned to the house to check on the couple’s 15-year-old daughter. She escaped unhurt by hiding in a cupboard.
The shopkeeper then tried to open the front gate to allow the family’s four dogs and their flock of sheep to escape.

One of the four dead dogs

But by then, four of the dogs and one of the sheep had succumbed.
Meanwhile, Abrams himself was beginning to feel the effects of the venomous stings.
“He was vomiting terribly and his skin was itching,” his wife recalled.
Fortunately, a friend managed to rush him to the West Demerara Regional Hospital, where he was admitted. Mr. Abrams’s condition had improved when Kaieteur News visited him yesterday.
His wife was treated at the same hospital and she considers herself fortunate to be alive.
She believes that her one-year-old son’s screams saved their lives.

“If the baby hadn’t hollered maybe I would have been dead.”
Mrs. Abrams said that they have been plagued by the swarm for several years and all of them have been stung before.
The swarm was still very much in evidence yesterday and Mrs. Abrams said that despite several appeals to the Ministry of Agriculture, no one has responded to their plight.
According to their next door neighbour, Carlos Williams, Africanised bees have been living in the ceiling of his home for about 25 years.

The dead Sheep

“From the time I was a child I know they used to be on a backdam, then they go into my home.”
Attempts have been made in the past to remove the swarm, but they have always returned, he said.
He showed Kaieteur News an area in the kitchen ceiling and in the roof behind the house where the bees have nested.
According to Williams, every family member has been stung.
He alleged that persons have offered to remove the insects, but have told the family that they would have to charge them to do so.
Just about a week ago, Africanised bees that are allegedly being kept by a Lamaha Park pensioner, killed four of his neighbour’s dogs.