Patch86
Di-Tron Heavy Industries
Freelancer Alliance
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Posted - 2007.03.30 12:45:00 -
[4]
 Originally by: westernstab
Originally by: Kalixa Hihro
Originally by: kublai
Africanized PK bees, I heard they vanished, being norwegian i'm far too busy battling polar bears to google this or have heard about it anywhere else.
Wtf happened?
I'm being serious, I keep finding broken american's who wont/can't answer this question and it's really getting to **** me off.
I was hiking in a fairly remote part of Arizona in 1993 and stumbled across a ground nest of these in a wash. I had headphones on and stumbled across a Volkswagen carcass overturned in the wash, full of bullet holes. How did it get there? I had no idea but I was out taking photographs (a hobby of mine) and couldn't resist.
After arranging myself to take a very cool photo, I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye.
I look to the left and see a rattlesnake coiled up ready to strike. I froze. I pulled my headphones out and plainly heard the buzzing of it's tail. I slowly backed away from it, and heard another buzzing. Right by my foot was a bee doing something, and 3 feet away, a hole in the ground with lots of bees flying in and out.
The bees were large, the one on the ground was about the size of my thumb.
I almost stepped on it. For those not in the know about these animals, had I done this, I'd be dead.
When one is killed it releases a pheremone. This causes the entire hive to go into attack mode and anything that moves near them in this state is going do be dead very quickly.
I slowly backed away from this party, and never ever wore headphones while hiking again. It's a habit I have to this day lol.
-Kal
That sounds a bit too big to be a killer bee. Killer bees are the same size normal bees and pretty much impossible to tell them apart from European bees by naked eye alone.
How you describe the hive being in a hole in the ground and the size it seems like you stumbled on a colony of desert bumble bees. they too could have swarmed but they normally only live in colony of about 50 bees and id say the greatest danger would have been you panicking and getting attacked by the rattler.
even when killer bees go on the attack your only in danger if your allergic or if you stay in the area(ouch!!!)
Bumblebees are never that big, surely. Most are no bigger than honey bees, only fatter (due to all that fluff).
Something as big as a thumb..........sounds like a hornet, or some other sort of wasp.
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