SAN MARCOS, Calif. — Paul Lorson only saw a few bees at first. Then hundreds, all of them heading right for him.
“The first few bees, they looked like they were looking right in my eyes,” he said. “I had basically about two or three layers of bees on my hands, my arms, my face, my head, and my neck, and they were stinging me the whole time.”
It happened last Monday afternoon. Paul volunteered to clear an area overgrown with brush and weeds at San Marcos United Methodist Church so they could build a community garden.
But several hours into the project, his tractor's bucket hit a pipe that had a well-established hive inside it with a lot of guard and worker bees. It quickly became clear that those bees had one goal - protect their turf.
“I ended up having 13 stings from here around to here on this eye,” Lorson said pointing from the top of his right eye around to the bottom.
Paul started running to the front of the church, but his cell phone and car keys were still on the tractor so he had no way to call for help or hide.
Making a bad situation, worse, he was covered with bees.
“I ran around the corner and here was a kid, 12-year-old boy, sitting there, minding his own business and I'm yelling at him cause I could see he had a cell phone to call 911,” Lorson said.
Paramedics took him to the hospital where they gave him an IV with a mix of medications to treat the swelling and the massive amount of venom in his system.
“The emergency room doctor described to my wife when I got there that when I first came in, I looked like a red balloon that was ready to pop,” Lorson said.
He spent nine hours in the emergency room before being released, but then returned the next day due to severe stomach pain. He ended up spending another three days in the hospital.
Lorson says he stopped counting after pulling out 120 stingers, but figures there are still more of them in his body. He's still tired and scared, but grateful to be alive.
Doctors said if he was allergic to bee stings, he probably would not have survived.
“Given the circumstances, I think I'm doing pretty good,” he said with a smile.”
Lorson added that he is planning to come back and finish the job. As for the bees, a removal company safely relocated them.
A bee expert who looked at our video says these were partially Africanized bees, but only a very small percentage. Not enough to be deadly unless the victim is allergic to stings.
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