A peaceful Saturday morning in Aledo was disturbed when a swarm of about 200,000 bees came swarming from the walls of a home.
Krysta Mullins told NBC 5 that she was still sleeping when her 9-year-old daughter came to wake her, telling her the dogs were crying on the upstairs balcony. When she went to check on them, she hardly had time to realize what the problem was before she was sent looking for an escape.
Mullins said the entire family took off in different directions, running down the street and stripping items of clothes, hoping they could eventually outrun the bees.
Though 911 was called, Mullins said they weren’t able to immediately get close to the house. A neighbor called Randall Kennedy of DFW Wildlife Control to help.
In total, Kennedy guessed there were as many as 200,000 bees swarming the street. He guessed they’d been building their hive for three years right in between Mullins’ home’s walls.
He said most bee species are more aggressive than they once were thanks to cross breeding with Africanized bees.
Over the course of a couple of hours, Kennedy was able to vacuum most of them up. Though without cutting into the wall, he said they’ll be impossible to completely remove.
No one was seriously injured, but Mullins said her family spent most of the day removing dozens of stingers from both them and one of their dogs. They’re still searching for their other dog that leaped from the balcony amidst the chaos.
