Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Attleboro Firefighters responded yesterday to a run reporting a woman stung. Turns out, she was stung more than 500 times after she reportedly stepped on a nest. FF David Capraro was one of the first to arrive to the report of a woman suffering from bee stings Monday night. The dispatchers updated responding FF's that the victim was still out and the bees were still all over her. The 53-year-old woman had been stung about 500 times. The yellow jackets were so relentless that they followed her in the ambulance and even into the emergency room at nearby Sturdy Memorial Hospital. 3 Firefighters also treated and released after enduring about a half dozen bites themselves.
One noted expert said nests grow from the size of a thumbnail in April to the size of a baseball in July to the size of a basketball this time of year, often with as many 10,000 inside. The nests grow until frost kills most of them. And yellow jackets don’t need to be provoked to sting. They can be attracted to someone just by their smell, or if the person happens to enter their flight path.Wasps are attracted by food, trash, lights, pet excrement, dried leaves, overgrown shrubbery, or grease built up on a grill.
