Perhaps it's part of a final revenge for killing them off, but swarms of bees have attacked folks in Laguna Woods and Costa Mesa within the last week.
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Bees Sting Life Out of 3 Australian Shepherds
The latest attack was around 11 a.m. Tuesday, when a maintenance man on a lawn mower at the Laguna Woods Golf Club, 24112 Moulton Parkway, apparently disturbed a beehive. A swarm swooped down and attacked a 72-year-old woman, stinging her about 15 times, and when her 74-year-old friend came over to assist, she was stung about 50 times, according to Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi.
The women, who had just played the 11th hole and were on their way to the 12th when the bees attacked, were first treated on the course by paramedics using credit cards to remove stingers, Concialdi said. “Just push (the credit card) into the skin and scrape it and it pulls
the stinger right out,'' the fire captain told City News Service.
Last Thursday morning, thousands of bees (presumably not the same ones) swarmed two men in the 880 block of Laird Place in Costa Mesa, sending both of them to the hospital as well.
A roofing contractor atop a home in the residential neighborhood apparently disturbed a hive before a swarm attacked him around 8 a.m. and then flew across the street to do the same to another man, according to Costa Mesa Fire Battalion Chief Bill Kershaw.
Both men were stung multiple times and complained of breathing problems before they were hospitalized, said Kershaw, who added his firefighters sprayed bees with foam to subdue them until workers from Bee Busters could arrive to remove the hive from under the roof.
Concialdi advises those being attacked by bees not to try to swat them away but rather quickly make a beeline to safety. “You can outrun bees,” he said. “Just get away from them.”
Of course, that could be easier said than done if you are in your 70s or up on a roof.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.