A swarm of killer bees killed two horses and attacked a couple in Pantego, Texas on Wednesday.
Kristen Beauregard,44, noticed that bees would fly in and out of a shed in the backyard of her home, but she didn't know how dangerous they were. She was exercising one of her two miniature horses on Wednesday when thousands of killer bees attacked her, her boyfriend and the horses, the Star-Telegram reports.
Beauregard didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the pony Trump, started to jump and kick. A dark swarm of bees appeared and began attacking. Beauregard resorted to jumping into a pool with her horse.
"It got all dark, like it was nighttime there were so many bees," she said. "We were trying to stand up in the water but every time we stuck our heads out for air, they would cover us and start stinging us. We were trying to breathe and they were stinging us in the face and in the nose."
Beauregard says she was stung about 200 times and her boyfriend was stung 50 times. The horses did not survive the attack.
"They were chasing us down, they were following us," she told the Star-Telegram. "We swept up piles and piles of them. ... It was like a bad movie."
The couple believes there were 30,000 bees. They're not sure what caused them to leave their hive and attack. The bees are being tested to find out if they're Africanized bees, which are also known as killer bees for their aggressive behavior.
Beauregard ran into the house, with bees following behind her. She watched as her horse ran around the yard, trying to get the bees off with bushes. Beauregard's boyfriend called 911 as the bees attacked the horses.
"It looked like they were moving because they were so covered in bees," Beauregard said. "It just looked like they were shimmering because the bees were on them and stinging them."
Firefighters had to put on their gear and squirted foam at the bees in the backyard. They dragged the horses into a pasture, where police and paramedics tried to save them, but it was too late. Chip, a 6-year-old show horse, died before a horse vet arrived. Trump was taken to a clinic by a trailer but the vet had to horse died on Friday.
"He had so much swelling in his face, he must have kept his face above water to breathe. That's where all the bee stings concentrated," Mansfield equine veterinarian Patricia Tersteeg said. "He was so overwhelmed by bites that his body could not handle it. That's way too much for any 250 pound mammal to survive."
The police and checked Beauregard's eyes and pulled stingers out of her body, but she didn't want to go to a hospital. She and her boyfriend are healing.
The bees also killed five hens. Another has stingers around her body and her eyes were swollen shut. The bees also stung the couple's dog.
A beekeeper was called to get rid of the hive and test the bees.
"A beekeeper disposed of the bees yesterday morning due to the fact that they were aggressive," Barry Reeves, Pantego assistant police chief said. "We were told it was a hybrid honey bee."
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