A seven-year-old girl was stung to death by a swarm of bees in San Agustin, Tlajomulco on Sunday.The girl, identified only as Jocelyn, died just before 8:30 p.m. at a private hospital in Santa Cruz de las Flores after being stung more than 50 times that afternoon.
Six other people were injured by the bees and were treated at the Green Cross headquarters in Tlajomulco. All had been released by Monday morning.
Firemen and State Civil Protection workers searched for the bees – believed to be black bees, an aggressive subspecies of the European dark bee – but found no trace of them in the area.While a great number of bee attacks occur regularly throughout Mexico, few are reported. Within the city limits of Guadalajara, however, statistics are kept and indicate that between 200 and 300 bee incidents occur in the city every month.
A non-toxic spray said to stop such attacks is now undergoing tests in Jalisco. Inventor Will Baird of Houston, Texas says his product, called BeeAlert, may be available south of the border within a few months and “may reduce the number of bee incidents which end in tragedy.”