At least 12 people were stung by honeybees after an attempt to remove a hive from the eaves of a home on Bogota’s west side, emergency management officials said.
Area residents told local media that there were even moments of panic when so many of the insects swarmed into a bus that passengers tried to jump out of the vehicle while it was still moving.
The Bogota deputy firefighters chief, Mauricio Ayala, told reporters that the bees apparently became aggressive when some men went to remove honeycombs from the beehive on Friday.
The people undertaking the task were apparently not experts in managing the insects, which were not of the so-call Africanized honeybee variety but rather of the common species that is normally not so aggressive.
The emergency forced authorities to close several roads and care for some of the people at the site, including one woman who fainted.
The director of the emergency center, Luis Beleño, told reporters that five people were taken to nearby medical centers after being stung several times on the face, arms and head.
