Scott Stromme’s father found him lying on the floor of his Nevada home last month, allegedly stung to death by hundreds of bees. Stromme was a beekeeper, and his death at the hands of his bees has caused his family and other bee experts to share a warning for others living in the home state of Las Vegas.
Stromme was keeping Africanized honeybees, which are extremely dangerous in comparison to domiciled, domestic honeybees. When his father, Phillip Stromme, found his body, it had welled up from the stings and his beekeeping hat was set to the side around hundreds of the dead bees.
“I went around the front door, opened that up, went in,” Phillip said, adding:
“And I knew right then he was in a place you don’t want to be.”
Phillip told 8News Now that his son was a jack of all trades, having previously worked as a guard at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
Africanized honeybees prompted a quarantine in Las Vegas in 2001 which is still in place today. A permit is needed to keep or transport the bees within the quarantined area. Daniel Millett, Operations Manager for Bee Master of Las Vegas, explained that this is because they are “more aggressive” than domestic bees.
“They respond with more bees than our domiciled, domestic bees that we’ve trained for 1200 or 1500 years to be nice and produce a lot of honey,” Millett said, labeling them “buck wild.”
