Hi Dale,
I feel your pain.
Actually, Africanized Honey Bees are just honey bees with an attitude. They nest in trees, attics, etc. and anywhere where they can find a cavity roughly the size of a bee hive box.
It sounds like you ran into a nest of ground nesting wasps. Horrible things imported from Europe. These are the scourage of forest firefighters who occasionally run into these and suffer 200-500 stings.
A friend of mine once had a nest of these on his farm and tried gasoline, drowning them, etc. Nothing worked. He finally poured concrete over all but one of the openings to their nest, then with the last opening, fit a shop vac hose with about 30’ of 4" pipe (30’ was about the limit - these bees were really pissed off by then), carefully nosing the pipe towards the opening and left the 30 gallon shop vac on for 2 weeks until the last wasp flew out and experienced that giant sucking sound. The shop vac had Rotenone inside to kill the wasps inside. He left it on for another week.
I was there when he opened the vac. We listened first with a stethoscope (his mom was a nurse) to assure ourselves they were dead inside. When we opened it, this 30 gallon vac was entirely full of dried, dessicated wasps!
I kept honey bees for awhile in the early 90s and at one time had about 12 hives. One day working them I ran out of fuel in my smoker and still had a hive open. I accidentally jarred it and bees boiled out. Even though I was veiled and gloved, I got about 50-60 stings through my clothing. The next summer I got stung once and my lips swelled up. Allergy testing indicated that I was severely allergic. That was the end of my beekeeping experiment. Took 2 years of getting “stung” weekly at my allergists until I wouldn’t react.
Beekeepers like to share their war stories. The worst I heard was the one who had a bee inside his veil and then crawling over his mustache. He stopped breathing and before he could pinch it, inhaled - getting the bee along with the air. He could feel it crawling inside his sinuses for a few minutes, going deeper and deeper. Then it stung. Imagine a nuke going off in your forehead. His eyes swelled shut for a week.
Inside the shop I have all sorts of German wasps. The queens like to find cavities to overwinter and occasionally I have found a few overwintering in the flutes on pins. We also have mason bees. These like holes 1/4" in diameter - thus old bolt holes in my lathe bench. The also investigate ears and I’ve been stung by these trying to crawl in. The bumblebees fly in and get disoriented - these usually get escorted carefully outside as they do most of the pollinating around here.
My worst ground wasp experience was in 1973 while digging hiking trail for the BLM. along the Columbia Gorge. We were brushing an old trail. 2 people ahead of me were using sickles and cutting the big stuff. I was following on hands and knees cutting anything flush to the ground so that a tripping hiker wouldn’t impale him/herself. I didn’t realized we had brushed over a nest. The wasps covertly arranged themselves at my wrists between the gloves and my long sleeves, pant cuffs, either side of my neck, then all stung simultaneously. Agonizing pain! I somehow managed to get up and run out of there. Only relief was to find a stream ice cold from snow melt and sit in there up to my neck, and experience a hypothermia induced anaesthetic.
Good luck with your recovery!
Casey
