One million killer bees are threatening an entire neighborhood in far east El Paso, Texas
A colony of about 1 million bees invaded the walls and roofof a home in far east El Paso. (KFOX14/CBS4)
EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) — An aggressive colony of bees invaded a far east El Paso neighborhood.
An extractor went out to the home where the bees have for several years to relocate them, but the aggressive bees wouldn't allow it.
Our sister-station, CBS4, reported about the homeowner's problem with these bees on Monday. Reporter Ashley Claster got a look at the beehive Monday in the Mission Estates community, and the bees were everywhere around her.
The bee specialist estimates there are almost 1 million Africanized bees living in the walls and the roof of the house. An older couple currently lives in the home and they said the beehive has been in their walls for three years. But now the bees are getting mean and the homeowners are worried about the neighbors, their pets and their children, who walk right past this house every day after school.
On Tuesday morning, bee specialist Pyong Livingston tried to extract the hive. He said he doesn't want to kill the bees, just move them out of the area. But his work Tuesday made the bees mad. KFOX14 photojournalist, Rudy Reyes, got stung at least eight times when he was recording video of the crew trying to remove the hive.
"I went on top of the roof. I went there with my camera and he was with his helper," Reyes said. "As soon as they got there and opened the roof, the shingles from the roof, it was, like, believe me, it was like a horror movie-- seeing this swarm of bees just coming out in a black cloud. Within seconds, I started getting stung by bees. I got two in the eye, in the head, and I just went into my unit. Even though I went into my unit, I still got bees inside my unit."
"They're mixed breeds -- Africanized and European together. So they are hybrids and they are maybe 20, 30 times more aggressive than regular honeybees," Livingston said. "We were swarmed. We found that, as soon as we opened up a little area, we thought there were maybe 20,000 bees. It turns out to be over 100,000 bees. So they swarmed us and they started biting me all over, even with the suits."
The street is blocked off, but our crew saw children walking right past the cone barriers on their way home from school.
The city of El Paso said the bees are not the city's responsibility. The city said the homeowner is responsible for calling a beekeeper to relocate them or exterminate them.
The bee specialist removed a large chunk of the hive Tuesday, but there are still bees left. Murphy will have to fix the roof and walls after the specialist is done.