When bees attack: Angry swarm traps terrified residents, sending four to hospital

Thousands of bees swarmed through a suburban Phoenix neighbourhood, stinging six people, including four who had to be hospitalised, before firefighters drove them off with foam and fire hoses.

One of the victims in the Tuesday evening bee attack in Gilbert, Arizona, was a firefighter who was stung 40 to 50 times after the insects got inside his special protective hood, said Mike Connor, a deputy chief with the Gilbert Fire and Rescue Department. The firefighter was among those taken to a hospital for treatment.

The bee swarm sent residents scrambling into their homes, where they were advised to stay by authorities as crews closed down a residential street to battle the amorphous cloud of insects.

Connor said it was not clear what prompted the bees to become aggressive but that it was not uncommon in Arizona for hives to be found in neighbourhood trees and that one might have been disturbed somehow.

Three people, two of them children, fled into homes after they were stung and firefighters were at first unable to help them because of the swarming bees, Connor said.