Police cordoned off a road in George Town on Friday in an effort to protect people from a swarm of aggressive bees.
The bees stung at least two people, attacked a dog and forced residents in the neighborhood to remain in their homes on Moxam Road for several hours.
The 911 call center received two calls Friday afternoon, one about the bees stinging a dog at 12:06 p.m. and another from a woman at 1:04 p.m. stating she had been attacked by the bees.
It is understood the bee attacks started after workers tried to remove a bee hive.
When the Cayman Compass arrived on Moxam Road Friday afternoon, a police cruiser was parked in the area with bees swarming around it. The officers were waiting for backup officers to secure the road by blocking both accesses to the area with road cones.
Dennis Edmund, who was carrying out gardening work in the area, said he had been attacked by bees as he worked at Palm Courts apartments nearby. He locked himself in the complex’s gym and waited for about two hours for the bees to disperse.
“I was locked up in there from after 12 o’clock and couldn’t come out,” he said.
One of his friends came to check on him and had to run away to escape from the bees. His friend returned with a truck and Mr. Edmund made a dash from the gym to the truck to get away. Chris Spradlin, a resident of Palm Courts, was unable to leave his apartment for much of the day because of the bees.
“I think there was a National Trust bat house in a tree, which the bees had taken over and an exterminator was trying to smoke out the bees when the box fell and was crushed,” said Mr. Spradlin.
He said that, earlier in the morning, he saw an excavator clearing the area and when he looked outside, there were lots of bees in the air.
“The driver of the excavator jumped out of cab and ran to his truck, … by this time, the bees were so mad and bad, I ran back inside,” he said.
A woman on her way to work was also attacked by the bees, according to Mr. Spradlin.
“She was walking down the street around noon and the bees attacked her. I shouted from the window for her to come over as she started yelling, ‘Help! help.’ I quickly opened the door to let her in, bees and all, and quickly slammed the door … I killed around 19 bees after I let her in and she managed to wash out the rest of the bees from her hair.”
Mr. Spradlin advised the young woman to go to the hospital for bee stings.
Local bee expert Otto Walter said he had sent a bee keeper to the site with a new box to give the bees a new hive.
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So let me get this straight – Bees terrorize a neighborhood for hours, attacking people and stinging them posing a threat to the community – and the last line of the article says they sent a bee keeper to the site with a new box to give the bees a new hive. So the solution is to negotiate with the bees? Tell them to stop stinging and we’ll give them a fresh new home so they can rebuild their colony even larger than before?