A BEE attack is suspected in the death of 66-year-old Haniff Mohamed, whose body was discovered at the Montrose Seawall, East Coast Demerara (ECD) on Monday.

According to a press release from the Guyana Police Force (GPF), the discovery of Mohamed’s body was made at 17:15 hrs on Monday last.

Police investigators were told that on Sunday last, between 09:00 hrs and 18:00 hrs, several residents suffered bee attacks around the Montrose, ECD area.  Residents claimed to have seen the deceased alive on Sunday last, at approximately 20:00 hrs.

After an apiarist, commonly referred to as “beekeeper”, was called to the area to tend to the bees, police say it was then that Mohamed was discovered, motionless, on the ground.

“He was then picked up by public-spirited persons and taken to the GPHC (Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation), where he was pronounced dead on arrival.”

While a post-mortem examination is still to be conducted on Mohamed’s body to determine the cause of death, the GPF has acknowledged in its release that there appeared to be bee stings about his body.

OTHER ATTACKS
Earlier this month, the Guyana Chronicle reported that in another part of the country, Region Six (East Berbice- Corentyne), three persons lost their lives after they were attacked by bees in three separate incidents. They were all pensioners.

The police had confirmed in a press release that those killed were John Sutherland, 57; Dorothy Muriel Adams, 58; and Sirpaul Hemraj, 62, called “Rishi”.

Sutherland, an amputee who’d lost his left foot, met his demise in the Eversham backlands after he left his home, along with two others, on a tractor to show them a rice field that had to be ploughed.

While in the field, Sutherland and one of his colleagues were sitting on the tractor’s fender when the driver made a sudden stop and shouted, “Bees!” The driver and the other man leapt from the tractor and ran to safety, leaving Sutherland, who could not escape with one leg quickly enough, behind. Sutherland’s body was discovered by the two men moments later with bee stings.

Adams, a housewife from Rotterdam, East Bank Berbice, succumbed after being stung by bees. An eyewitness, one Stevon Ganpat, recalled it was a “sad” sight.

He noted that a person who lives at the house where the bees came from ran out of the house and a swarm of bees followed. He added that he noticed several animals were also on the road, running in different directions, seeking shelter from the bees, and then he saw the woman’s upper body covered in the insects.

“I see this woman walking coming, and if you see bees on this woman! You can’t see her face! From her waist go up, you can’t see anything! That’s how thick the bees was [sic], and she just sat there on the bench at the bus shed, and she hollering for help, but nobody couldn’t help her,” Ganpat said, recalling the horror of Adams’s death.

Hemraj, a Drainage and Irrigation (D&I) worker of Mibicuri South, Black Bush Polder, was also unaidable when he was attacked by bees in the BBP backdam.

It is reported that Hemraj was sitting on his motorcycle, while Chandradall Nankoo, 50, and Rajendra Mohan, 49, both rangers attached to the region, and Michael Tyndell, 25, a mechanic attached to the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) were standing next to an excavator when someone shouted, “Bees!”

The trio, excluding Hemraj, who was left behind, ran in different directions seeking shelter.

About half of an hour later, the trio returned to the excavator, where they saw Hemraj covered in mud, and what appeared to be red swelling marks about his body. He was rushed to the Mibicuri Public Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.