The Bahamas National Trust (BNT) is alerting the general public about aggressive bee attacks within the East Grand Bahama area.

The BNT recently had a team of three (3) scheduled to conduct bird surveys in the vicinity of East Grand Bahama from 7th – 15th June. On June 12th, the team was on Lightbourne Cay located south of Sweetings Cay, when they encountered an aggressive swarm of bees around 600 meters into the native vegetation. This encounter resulted in team members receiving numerous stings with one person being stung up to sixteen (16) times.

Based on the extreme aggression of their behavior, the BNT believes that these may be Africanized bees. We do also acknowledge several anecdotal reports from Grand Bahama, namely Freeport and Sweetings Cay, regarding attacks from aggressive bees that therefore affirm our suspicions.

The BNT has communicated with the Department of Agriculture regarding this issue and has requested an inquiry into this matter.

If members of the general public have any questions or would like to make a report about aggressive bees, please contact BNT’s Grand Bahama National Park Manager, Mr. Ellsworth Weir (eweir@bnt.bs or 352-5438), or Science Officer Scott Johnson (sjohnson@bnt.bs or 393-1317).