STUART — Three people were attacked by a swarm of bees on Monday that came from a hive about the size of a car engine.

“I have never experienced anything like this before in my life,” said Kendall Todd, owner of Affordable Pressure Cleaning in Palm City.

Todd and his brother were pressure cleaning Becky Engebretsen’s driveway in the 1800 block of Northwest River Point Drive, when they first started noticing some bees. After spraying the bees with water, more continued to show up until finally they were forced to take off on foot.

“We ran a quarter mile and the swarm was still attacking us,” Todd said.

Todd was stung three times, but his brother was stung nine times.

“I deal with this stuff a lot but nothing like this, ever,” Todd said.

Todd and his brother sat in a fire truck for about an hour; until the bees subsided after the pressure cleaning machine was turned off.

Engebretsen got stung twice when she went outside looking for Todd.

“My neighbor said the hive was out there for about three years,” Engebretsen said. “It never bothered anybody until today.”

Steve Kinch, from Alpine Farms Bee Removal in Palm City, believes the bees became upset over the loud noise and vibrations coming from the pressure cleaning machine. The bees could have also gotten more aggressive over time because of how large the hive had gotten.

It took Kinch two hours to remove the hive that hanged about 4-feet from the tree and was 2-feet thick, making it the biggest hive he has removed from a tree, he said.

“It was a humongous hive. It has been there for at least a few years,” he said.

While Kinch was removing the 100 pounds of honey comb the bees were attacking him aggressively more then what he usually encounters.

“They were attacking me very heavily,” Kinch said. “They get angry when removing a hive, but these bees were clumping up on me. They were very very aggressive.”

Kinch doesn’t believe the bees were the aggressive African wild bees, also known as killer bees, descendents of southern Africa bees imported in 1956, because they usually live in smaller hives> However, it won’t be known for sure unless the bees are sent to a lab.

“If I knew then what I know now I would have had them taken care of,” said Engebretsen. “I can’t have them chasing down workers.”

By Monique Mattiace

Tags: brother, car, driving, ear, engine, engineers, fire, fires, foot, honey, imported, noise, Stuart, trees, water

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am and is filed under Palm City, Stuart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.