Help Document Serious Bee Incidents

Many serious bee-related incidents never appear in the news. Honey Bee Awareness is working to document serious incidents so communities can better understand risk patterns, improve safety education, support responsible beekeeping, and help prevent future injuries.

A person may be treated at a hospital. A dog, horse, goat, or other animal may be treated by a veterinarian. A fire department may respond. A beekeeper, bee-removal professional, or pest-control operator may remove the colony afterward. A family may deal with the incident privately.

If no public report is made, the incident may disappear from public awareness. Voluntary reports can help preserve important public-safety lessons without requiring private medical, veterinary, or EMS records.

What Kinds of Incidents Should Be Reported?

We are especially interested in serious bee-related public-safety incidents involving:

• human hospitalization, emergency treatment, severe injury, or fatality
• pets, horses, livestock, poultry, or other animals injured or killed
• firefighters, EMS, police, animal control, utility workers, or other responders
• mowing, weed-eating, chainsaws, tractors, brush clearing, tree work, landscaping, or construction
• schools, parks, playgrounds, public buildings, trails, neighborhoods, farms, ranches, or worksites
• hidden colonies in walls, trees, sheds, tires, meter boxes, irrigation boxes, equipment, barns, or other cavities
• repeated aggressive or highly defensive bee behavior near people, animals, workers, or public spaces

Minor everyday stings do not need to be reported unless they are part of a larger serious incident.

Who Can Submit a Report?

A report may be submitted by someone directly involved or by someone who knows of a credible incident.

• the person who was attacked
• a family member
• a property owner
• an animal owner
• a beekeeper or bee-removal professional
• a veterinarian or clinic staff member, when privacy is respected
• a firefighter, responder, public employee, or agency representative
• a witness
• someone who found a public news article, official report, or public record

What Information Is Helpful?

Useful information may include:

• approximate date of the incident
• city, county, and state
• what the person or animal was doing when the incident happened
• whether bees were in a wall, tree, shed, tire, meter box, irrigation box, hive, or other location
• whether anyone went to the hospital, urgent care, or emergency room
• whether animals were injured or killed
• whether responders were involved
• whether the colony was removed afterward
• links to public news reports, agency posts, photos, videos, or other public sources

If medical or veterinary treatment occurred, it is usually enough to say that treatment occurred. Personal records are not required.

How Reports Are Used

Submitted reports are reviewed before any public use. Not every submitted report will be published immediately. Some reports may need clarification, some may be combined with existing public records, and some may remain unpublished if details cannot be confirmed.

When incidents are added to the public database, Honey Bee Awareness uses careful labels for source strength, bee identification status, date certainty, severity, trigger or activity, and public-safety lesson. We do not label bees as Africanized unless the available information supports that wording.

You can learn more about this process on the Methodology page.

For Clinics, Responders, Beekeepers, and Community Leaders

If you are a veterinarian, firefighter, EMS worker, animal-control officer, beekeeper, extension agent, rancher, landscaper, tree worker, property manager, public employee, or community leader, you can help without sharing private records.

Please direct affected people to the incident report form so they can choose whether to submit their own information. That keeps the report voluntary and helps avoid privacy problems.