The accident scene you really don't want to be sent to

[dianeduane]

After 16-year-old Jacqueline Cossairt of Markle lost control of a sport utility vehicle on gravel-covered Wells County Road 1050 North about 4:30 p.m., it struck an old hollow tree, rousting 80,000 to 100,000 honeybees inside.

By the time Ossian Volunteer Fire Chief Kent Gilbert arrived he found a black cloud of the insects swarming around the GMC Envoy.

“Those bees were mad,” he said. “I’ve never seen bees, especially honeybees, attack like that.”

And those angry bees turned what Gilbert said should have been a 10-minute extrication of the teen who was pinned inside her truck into 45 agonizing minutes as firefighters tried to figure out a way to safely work among the bees.

Cripes, what a nightmare.

Comments

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the baseball cap under the veil just as yet another layer to prevent them from stinging my scalp.

The "smoke calms bees" thing isn't a 100% dead cert, if the bees are already in attack mode it'll do very little and even on a relaxed hive it won't necessarily slow them down (I present hive#1 in the back garden as a prime example).

What the smoke is doing is triggering the "oh sh*t the wood is on fire start eating that honey right now just in case we need to leg it" response. Bees are generally a lot dopier when they're feeling fat (just think 3pm on xmas day after the full turkey fat bugger meal). This is why swarms which have left the main hive are terrifying to look at but quite safe to be near (a lot of keepers will take a swarm with no protective kit on other than a veil to keep bees out of their eyes and hair).

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

I did not know that... thanks.
*squirrels away nugget of information for possible later use*

Presumibly one would want to keep the amount of smoke use down to minimum since that would reduce the amount of honey...

Hmm, I wonder if cold air/gas would make them sluggish enough without harming them? Something like a modified CO₂ fire extinguser with a variable outlet valve so you could control the flow perhaps?

[korenwolf.livejournal.com]

Presumibly one would want to keep the amount of smoke use down to minimum since that would reduce the amount of honey...

General advice is to use as much as is required to quiten down the hive, which with my evil little darlings is a fair bit, the real trick is to get "cool" smoke, which normally involves stuffing freshly ripped up grass in the top of the smoker to cool it down.

Hmm, I wonder if cold air/gas would make them sluggish enough without harming them? Something like a modified CO2 fire extinguser with a variable outlet valve so you could control the flow perhaps?

The problem with using something to cool down the bees / hive is that the brood will get chilled which will kill them knocking the hive right back over the next month or so. Rule of thumb for opening the hives is that it's got to be warm enough to work in in a t-shirt or similar any cooler.

However with the big swarm in the story it would probably work, another approach if they'd had some local keepers around is to find the queen and rehive her, the bees would then start sending out the "come home" signal which might have started to calm them down a bit as well.