According to his family, an Ohio man is expected to recover after being stung approximately 20,000 times by bees and ingesting about 30 of them while cutting tree branches last week.
Austin Bellamy, 20, was climbing a tree Friday morning to help a friend trim its branches when he accidentally cut into a nest full of African killer Bees, according to his mother, Shawna Carter. The latter set up a GoFundMe page to help with his medical expenses.
According to US Department of Agriculture research, Africanized honey bees are “more defensive, stinging more with less provocation than other honey bees.”
Carter claimed that the Ripley Fire Department informed her that the bees were killer bees. According to the outlet, a Southwest Ohio Beekeepers Association spokesperson stated that a bee sample would be required to identify the species.
Fox subsidiary According to WXIX-TV, his grandmother Phyllis Edwards and uncle Dustin Edwards witnessed the incident.
“I was going to try to climb the ladder to get to Austin… but I couldn’t because bees surrounded me,” Phyllis explained to the outlet.
“He tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t,” she added. “He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ And nobody would help him.”
According to the outlet, a Ripley Fire Department firefighter named Craig was able to save Bellamy before he was rushed to the hospital for treatment.
According to WXIX-TV and WCPO-TV, Bellamy awoke from a medically-induced coma at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center on Wednesday night.
According to the news outlets, Bellamy is expected to recover fully.
Carter said she passed out when she learned about her son’s death because “it was just too much for me to take.”
“It looked like he had a black blanket on his head down to his neck, down to his arms,” she explained, adding that “he had bees inside of him, and they suctioned bees out of him until Sunday morning.”
She also expressed gratitude to the firefighter who assisted her son. “When I think of Craig, I think of a lifesaver,” she explained. “He’s Austin’s guardian angel.”
Bellamy is still in the hospital, according to WCPO-TV. Bellamy had kidney failure, according to Carter. “He ate about 30 bees,” she explained.
