Bee Attacks Across the Country Lead to Questions About 'Killer Bees'

Aug. 27, 2011 — -- A errant playground ball hit a beehive in Cocoa Beach, Fla., sending a swarm of angry bees after the kids, chasing them into their school and pursuing them into classrooms.

"They still had bees in their clothes," said Chief G.C. Wine of the Cocoa Beach Fire Department of the Thursday attack. "A lot had stingers still stuck in them. We had to remove them from their faces and scalps."

There were about 120 stings among 38 kids as young as 5 and 7, Wine said.

On Wednesday, 95-year-old Louis Todero was out for a walk in Redondo Beach, Calif., and did not hear the warnings to stay away when a fumigator was spraying a bee hive on the side of an apartment building. Before he knew it, Todero was attacked by the swarm and suffered between 400 and 600 stings.

"He's a remarkable man. He got bit all over his neck and his arms and in his eyes," his daughter Louise Todero told ABC's Los Angeles affiliate KABC. "He's doing fine, and he's still lucky to be here."

Those attacks were the latest in a series of particularly aggressive bee swarms this summer in Florida, California, Texas and Arizona. They have attacked people, dogs and horses. So far, an 82-year-old man in Brownsville, Texas, and a horse have died from the shower of stingers.

But at least one bee expert rejects the suggestion that bees have been unusually aggressive this summer.

Dr. May Berenbaum, a professor and department head at the University of Illinois' Department of Entomology and one of the country's leading bee experts, said that roughly 40 people die from bee attacks per year—which she prefers to call "bee encounters" or "sting events"—out of a population of over 300 million people.

"The fear is really disproportionate to the risk," Berenbaum said.

It's not known what type of bees were involved in this week's attacks, but authorities are aware that aggressive colonies of Africanized bees -- dubbed "killer bees" -- are spreading in the country.