Last week Brian was attacked by a swarm of bees. He was delivering supplies to one of our remote villages 1½ hrs away. He had already landed and was with the missionary along with a small crowd of indigenous at the helipad. They had just unloaded the cargo from the helicopter and were refueling with 5 gal cans of fuel when he noticed the tribal folk getting spooked about something.
Then the missionary told him to get down and hold still. Since Brian couldn’t understand the language of the tribal folk he had no idea what was going on until the swarm was already all around them. In an instant, there were bees landing on him and stinging faster than he could swat them off.
They took off running to the missionary’s house, which was down and up a very steep river bank, about ¼ mile away. The bees pursued them all the way, stinging them while they ran, and Brian had around 20-30 bee stings by the time they got inside.
It was so crazy that afterwards it seemed kind of funny to them, but we were all thankful nobody had an adverse reaction to the stings. It makes you realize how bad it could be if the only medivac pilot around would become injured in a remote place and unable to fly for help. We were also thankful there were no bees hiding out in the helicopter for the 1½ hr flight home.
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