A swarm of highly aggressive bees has taken over part of a neighborhood in Concord, and starting Friday, residents began calling police to report being attacked or stung. So far, the bees have killed two dachshunds, as ABC 7 reports, and the hive has yet to be contained.
Multiple people have reported being stung, include a postal worker, who went to the hospital for treatment Friday, as KRON 4 reports.
The hive is located at a home on the 3800 block of Hitchcock Drive in Concord, and bee experts say they are likely Africanized bees that have migrated from South America and usurped European honeybee hives. A homeowner trying to remove one hive may have caused this colony to turn aggressive.
Also, apparently, this is bee swarm season.
Calling the swarm "off the charts aggressive," Mt. Diablo Beekeepers Association member Norman Lott tells KRON 4 that they will be putting out a temporary hive with pheromone bait to lure the bees away. And, he says, only a DNA test can confirm if these are, indeed, Africanized "killer bees."
Via the Chron, you can see Lott giving a press conference Saturday about the ordeal, and he advises people to drive through the area with their car windows up, and not to walk through on foot.
This is the first apparent major encounter with Africanized bees in the Bay Area since researchers found the first of their kind here last September. Those bees were discovered in Lafayette, and as UC San Diego professor Joshua Kohn said at the time, "An Africanized honeybee out foraging on flowers is no more aggressive than your average European honeybee. Nor is the sting of an individual any different. It’s only when a hive is disturbed that the level of aggression from Africanized bees is elevated."
Previously: The Bay Area Has Killer Bees For The First Time Ever