Latest update December 23rd, 2024 3:40 AM
Deadly ‘killer bee’ attacks in Guyana
In August, 2010, 65-year-old Iris Singh was on the family’s farm at Parika Backdam, East Bank Essequibo, when she heard a worker scream.
From some 50 feet away, she then saw her husband, 70-year-old Kawal Singh, standing with his face covered “with a cloud of bees.”
The badly injured man managed to warn his wife to stay back, before collapsing. He was already dead by the time workers took him to the Leonora Cottage Hospital.
In September, 2011, 48-year-old mechanic Sheikh Imran Hassan and one of his brothers were working on a vehicle near his Eccles, East Bank Demerara residence when their activity apparently disturbed a hive of Africanised bees that were in the ceiling of a nearby building.
Sheikh Imran Hassan
Kawal Singh
Romesh Samaroo
The mechanic’s brother managed to jump in a drum of water, while Hassan put a bucket on his head, but then fell and was immediately covered in hundreds of bees. He was eventually taken to the Dr. Balwant Singh Hospital where he succumbed.
In August, 2014, nine-year-old Romesh Samaroo, called ‘Khrishna’, of Lima Housing Scheme, Essequibo, was riding on a street at La Belle Alliance when a group of boys struck a ball into a clump of bushes and disturbed a hive of Africanised bees.
After seeing the swarm, the boys jumped into a nearby canal. Samaroo, who could not swim, remained on the road, where the bees attacked him.
Samaroo’s grandfather tried to cover his grandson with his own body, but by then the child was already badly stung.
The child and his grandfather were admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, where Samaroo died four days later.
In April, 2015, Africanised bees attacked several Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) employees at the Uitvlugt Sugar Estate.
Estate, West Coast Demerara. Among those who were badly stung was Corinne Greene, 53, of West Meten-meer-Zorg, West Coast Demerara.
She was first admitted to the West Demerara Regional Hospital. She was discharged but then taken to a private hospital after her condition worsened. She eventually succumbed.
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