A young American man, Austin Bellamy, has been left in a coma after reportedly being stung by bees for over 20000 times.
21-year-old Austin Bellamy, from Ohio, US, had been trimming a lemon tree when he unknowingly sliced open a bee hive, causing thousands of furious African killer bees to swarm around his head, neck, and shoulders.
His grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, and his uncle watched on in horror from the ground.
Edwards told news outlet Fox19: “When he started cutting them, that’s when the bees came out, and he tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t.
“He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!'”
She and his uncle were also attacked, so couldn’t help the suffering man – meaning he was stuck in the tree.
“I was going to try and climb the ladder to get to Austin… I seen how high he was… but I couldn’t get to him because I was surrounded [by] bees,” she added.
Firefighters who attended the scene managed to get Bellamy down from the tree, and he was then airlifted to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center where he was put on a ventilator and placed in a medically-induced coma.
Meanwhile, Edwards was taken to a local hospital in an ambulance.
Bellamy’s mother, Shawna Carter, said her son was stung more than 20000 times and had swallowed about 30 bees, and said hospital staff were “suctioning” the insects out of him.
She added that she passed out when she found out what had happened to her son.
“It was just too much for me to take,” she said.
Bellamy fortunately awoke on Wednesday morning but remains in hospital. Doctors expect him to make a full recovery.
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