Man stung by killer bees more than 150 times while trimming a tree

By Kristy Wolski, Reporter
Last Updated: Saturday, August 7, 2010
SAFETY HARBOR —
A day on the job could have been deadly for a group of landscapers on Saturday afternoon.

The group was cutting down a tree at a house on 3rd Street South when killer bees started to swarm.

Anthony Cimillo was one of the landscapers who was attacked.

“The whole branch like seven feet of it was a nest,” he said. “We didn’t know that. We thought it was just at the end and when it came down it just exploded and bees just came out from everywhere.”

One of the workers immediately called 911 and emergency crews arrived quickly, but three men still had to be taken to the hospital.

Cimillo and fellow worker Mike Foster suffered between 50 and 75 stings each, but their co-worker Ralph St. Pierre was in the tree when the nest fell and took the brunt of the attack.

He was tied to the tree when the bees began to swarm. St. Pierre’s co-workers had to cut him loose, after which he fell about eight feet to the ground.

St. Pierre was stung more than 150 times.

Beekeeper Rodney Tyoe said there were around 50,000 bees inside of the tree.

“He had his eyes closed, bees were in his mouth and his ears,” said Foster of St. Pierre’s attack. “They stopped counting when they pulled like 200 stingers off of him in the ER. He was lit up. He looked like he was on fire, the way his hands were going over his whole body.”

After Foster and Cimillo were treated and released from the hospital, they went back to the scene to finish their landscaping job.

St. Pierre, however, is still recovering at the hospital, far away from the bees.

“Those guys ran into a real serious bunch of Africanized bees,” said Tyoe. “They’ve got a bee comb down that tree about six to eight feet.”

According to the Tyoe, 85 percent of bees that live in the U.S. are Africanized, or killer, bees.

A bee removal service was brought in to help exterminate some of the bees.