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Woman's last words as bees attacked: 'I love you, Ted'
Fri Aug 2, 5:30 AM ET
L. Anne Newell , ARIZONA DAILY STAR


Ted Richard remembers a black cloud of bees descending on his girlfriend and then him.

Trying to fend off the thousands of angry insects, he and Cheryl McClain ran toward their home, he said Thursday from his hospital bed. They sprayed themselves with water and tore at their clothes.

Finally, he said, McClain looked at him and said, "I love you, Ted."

"I love you too, Cheryl. It'll be OK, Cheryl," he answered as she collapsed.
McClain, 46, a grandmother who worked at Northern Cochise Community Hospital in Willcox, died in front of the home the pair shared for seven months near Sunizona.

Officials at the Cochise County Medical Examiner's Office said she was stung at least 80 times and died from anaphylactic shock, the fifth person in Arizona to die from a bee attack since 1993. Officials said they think she was allergic to bees, but there's no way to know for sure now.

Two other people were attacked by bees the day after McClain died. Juanita Orta, 63, and her son, Alex Kane, 43, were stung hundreds of times outside a home near South Camino de Oeste and West Irvington Road.

Orta remained in the intensive care unit at St. Mary's Hospital on Thursday while Kane was released from Kino Community Hospital.

Officials weren't surprised by the attacks, likely by Africanized bees. They said colonies are more aggressive than normal this year because of the drought.

"Her lips were blue, her eyes were glossy," Richard, 36, said of McClain. "You could tell she was gone. I knew she was gone."

Richard said that when he realized she was gone, he fell to the porch, too, hands over his face.

He passed out and didn't come to until he heard paramedics with a bullhorn urging him to come to them. The Tucson native stumbled to the ambulance and blacked out again, he said from his bed at Tucson Medical Center.

Hundreds of sting marks dotted his hands, arms, back, neck and abdomen. He had dead bees in his hair, ear and inside his jeans when he got to the hospital.

The attack came as the couple moved shelves to a storage shed about 50 feet behind their home, he said. He moved a couch inside to make room, and when he emerged he saw the bees swarming McClain.

The bees had been there at least one year, said McClain's parents, who also live on the property. But the insects never caused any problems, they said.

"It feels like someone's sticking you with a needle," Richard said. "Wherever they sting you, it burns. I was on fire. I've never had this kind of agony before in my life."

Richard remembered McClain - whom he met at the Willcox hospital when he had kidney stones removed - as an honest woman who did what she promised and cared for everyone.

"We were close," he said. "There was a lot of love there. She was one of those people who'd do anything for you. We lost a good person. It's going to be hard to go into that house and know she's not there. I wish it could have been me."
He hoped, though, that McClain's death might help people understand the dangers of bees.

"Take care of the bees in your yard now. Don't wait for tomorrow," he said. "You might go out today and water your lawn and be fine and go out tomorrow and be dead."


Bees kill woman and hurt 3 others
Thu Aug 1, 5:14 AM ET
L. Anne Newell , ARIZONA DAILY STAR

A 63-year-old woman and her son were stung by hundreds of bees in front of their Southwest Side home Wednesday, officials said, one day after a woman died and her boyfriend was seriously injured in a similar attack in Cochise County.

Officials said they weren't surprised by the attacks, which likely involved Africanized bees, because colonies this year have been more aggressive than before. They expect more incidents as the peak months for bee activity begin.
"Unfortunately, we fully expected that we were going to have serious attacks occur this year due to the drought conditions," said Tom Martin, president of AAA Africanized Bee Removal Specialists Inc.

Bees face limited resources because of the drought, he said, and are robbing other hives of honey. They're using an increased number of "guard" bees - the ones most likely to attack people - to repel raids, he said.

Martin said his company is abating about the same number of hives as last year, "but the aggressiveness these colonies display is at least 10 times worse."
In fact, four employees have gone to the hospital for stings this year, he said, and two retired from the business on the advice of their doctors.

Colonies this year are more dangerous, too, Martin said, because of last year's favorable conditions. There was a bumper crop of bees in 2001, he said, and many are around still, further straining resources.

Mother, son attacked

The Tucson woman, Juanita Orta, and her son, Alex Kane, 43, were taken to area hospitals after the 4:45 p.m. incident at a home near South Camino de Oeste and West Irvington Road, said Drexel Heights Fire Assistant Chief Gary Bynum.

"When we arrived, the bees were swarming all over the son and the mother," Bynum said. "He was spraying off his mother, trying to protect her."
Firefighters turned their hoses upward, creating an umbrella effect that allowed the pair to run to an ambulance.

Officials located the hive in the eaves of a house, Bynum said, near where relatives said Orta and Kane had been releasing propane from a tank just before the attack. A contractor was scheduled to remove the hive late Wednesday, he said.

Orta and Kane were having trouble breathing but were expected to recover, Bynum said.

Fatal attack

The Cochise County man, Ted Richard, 36, also is expected to recover. He remained at Tucson Medical Center late Wednesday in fair condition.

That incident, the fifth time someone has died from bee stings in Arizona since 1993, occurred at about 2:30 p.m

behind McClain's trailer, near Arizona 181 east of Sunizona, when they were attacked, relatives and officials said.

"They went out there in the truck and the next thing I knew, I heard both of them yelling and screaming," said McClain's father, Mac McGraw. "I couldn't figure out what was happening so I went out on my porch and they said, 'Call 911, we're being attacked by bees.'"

McGraw said the pair ran the 40 feet back toward McClain's trailer covered with bees. The swarm kept attacking even as its victims tried to spray the bees off with water hoses, he said.

"The bees were so bad, they were even coming and stinging me on the porch, probably 50 feet away," he said.


By the time an ambulance arrived at the rural acreage McGraw and his wife of 50
years, Roberta, shared with their daughter, McClain had reached her trailer steps and Richard was on the porch, both lying prone, McGraw said.

Richard got up and walked to the ambulance when medics called to him, McGraw said, but his daughter didn't move. He walked to her, fending off the bees from his eyes and nose.

"I tried to get them to get to my daughter and they said she was already dead," he said. "I went over to her and took a hold of her arm and it was like she was a rag doll, it just flopped."

Authorities said they believe McClain, a nurse's assistant who worked at Northern Cochise Community Hospital in Willcox and had one daughter and granddaughter, was allergic to bees.

"It was a terrible thing. It's something I'll never forget," McGraw said. "I don't know how long it will take to get this imprint out of my mind of her laying there on the steps."

The bees were in the storage shed for at least a year, said McGraw, who was stung 20 times.

"She was a very caring and a very loving person," he said of his daughter. "It was a terrible accident and a terrible loss."

Martin said he arranged to remove the hive for free after hearing of the attack.
"I am sick over what happened because I know how painful it is to be stung," he said of the attack, which he's almost positive involved Africanized bees. "I would be shocked if this were anything other than an Africanized bee colony, just like the case in Tucson."