Mexico's Africanised Killer Honey Bees

Now we have travelled a fair amount around this world and have been very lucky in respect of unfortunate incidents and the like.  Infact only two instances come to mind, one was where a lorry wiped us off the motorway in Sao Paolo but all was well in the end and the other was where Wayne came back to his hire car having completed a trail in Costa Rica to find that local bandits had completely smashed it up and followed him back into the forest with knives in hand but that too ended well!  However it's safe to say that we have just experienced the most scary/dangerous incident in our entire lives in Mexico - to be specific on a track just off the Las Colorados road whilst looking for Lesser Roadrunner.

All was well we were watching a female Mexican Sheartail collecting nest material, I had carried on a little along the track when I heard Wayne shout out that he had just been stung on his eyelid by a bee and then it went down hill... to cut a long story short we were both suddenly under attack from a swarm of bees, Wayne shouted run but it was too late, my hat was covered and they were dropping on to my face and hands - we went as quick as we could back along the track towards the car until they left us which seemed like forever.  Back at the car I looked at Wayne and noticed he didn't have his glasses on - in the attack and frenzy of him waving his arms about he had knocked his glasses off back up the track - he had a total of about 10 stings around his eyes and behind his ears and some on his hands - I removed the stings and poured water over him to cool him down as it was extremely hot.  Amazingly and we will never know to this day why but I didn't have one sting.

So we had to retrieve the glasses, he couldn't drive without them and hadn't brought a spare pair so we decided to drive back up the track and I would try to find them before we drove over them! We got near to the crime scene and I could see them broke in the middle of the track - lens out, arm bent back and then the car was under attack from more bees - we had to get the glasses so we positioned the car immediately next to them and I slowly opened the door to try and reach but before I knew it bees had got in the car and were going bezerk along with Wayne and once again they stung his eyelid and once again they didn't touch me!  Anyway we eventually killed the ones in the car and managed to get the glasses without any more stings.  We put the glasses back together and went back to where we were staying in Rio Lagartos.

Now whilst recalling our tale to fellow birders and bird guide at Rio Lagartos they too had been attacked by bees, one that morning on the San Felipe road and one the week before in Rio Lagartos plus the next day villagers in Rio had also been stung.  We were told that it was due to the local people collecting honey and disturbing the bees but a warning to anyone thinking of visiting this area - take extreme care you only have to google Africanised honeybees in Mexico to see there is a problem - whether these bees were the so called African Killer bees or just endemic honey bees we do not know but this was a traumatising experience.  But we had a small revenge here's one we killed after it stung Wayne!

Sorry it's out of focus but I was still shaky!
This makes interesting reading http://www.saudicaves.com/mx/bees/