horses and bees dont mix

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This is not normal horse behavior. Horses do not go towards unusual occurrences. They run away from them. They do not run in to assist horses that are in trouble. They thank their lucky stars it's not them and run away. Millions of years of natural selection has weeded out the brave ones. There is something here that is not fully understood. Before someone tells me they have a brave jumper, I understand but that's a different matter.
 
That was my thoughts exactly -horses dont do that..though in panic they are VERY unpredictable..but only going with info given.
 
I have 12 hives (Sometime 20+) less than 10ft from my stables. There is a fence between them and so far no trouble at all. The fields around the hives have Rheas, Horses, and Cattle in. The only thing to be stung was one of the horse women, who wanted to have a look at a hive!
My sympathies go out to the horse owners.

Thanks for the warning.

Pete
 
Peterwh said:
This is not normal horse behavior. Horses do not go towards unusual occurrences. They run away from them. They do not run in to assist horses that are in trouble. They thank their lucky stars it's not them and run away. Millions of years of natural selection has weeded out the brave ones. There is something here that is not fully understood. Before someone tells me they have a brave jumper, I understand but that's a different matter.
Click to expand...

:iagree:
 
I am desperately sorry that this has been verified - how awful for horse owner and beekeeper. I can empathise with both having owned horse and now bees.

I agree that it seems unusual behaviour for horses but nevertheless a real shame.
 
ben.pullan said:
One of the horses managed to jump into the section of the field where several bees were kept, and it appears that a hive was knocked over and the horse was stung.
The horse panicked, and practically all the hives in the apiary were knocked down, and the horse was severely attacked.
This attracted the other three horses in the field to come over, and these too, were severely stung.
Click to expand...

Seems to me the problem was not the bees, or the horses, but the failure to segregate the two properly. Would be a shame if all this was down to a bit of poorly maintained or inadequate fencing and the horse looking for a good scratching post. Naturally the media, if they get hold of this, will not see it this way as a sensational headline is far better for business than "Old fence causes unnecessary loss".

Horses have a reputation for kicking when threatened. Seems this one did just that and kicked the hives over, making matters many times worse. Why did it venture in to where the bees were in the first place, though? Livestock have the sense to run away from stinging bees. If it "jumped in", why didn't it simply jump back out again?

I have seen a similar situation where a bullock had wondered into a poorly fenced field-edge apiary and knocked over a hive by scratching. Farmer maintained that the livestock hadn't been anywhere near the bees, but the cowpat next to the toppled hive couldn't be ignored. I helped put the hive back together and sort out the bees whilst the farmer checked the bullocks on the far side of the field - one looking somewhat listless and very sorry for itself, with a swollen face and half closed eye.
 
Unfortunately I live in Horse Country and trying to find an "out apiary" has been difficult with many people saying they would love to have bees but the neighbour is against it as they have horses.
Yet I have 2 hives in a friends garden next to a paddock with horses and in 5 years there has not been any issues -- first time I went there I puffed lots of smoke into the air and the horses moved away -- now they come up to me if I'm out of "uniform", with the "whites" on they go to the other end of the field until I take it off.
 
There are horses next to my hives but are well segregated by fence, trees and a stream.

The wife has horses also and it does sound a little odd, one did have a very severe reaction to something once and swelled up like a balloon, it was on 75 piriton a day to get rid of the reaction. (I still have the pot of 500 we had and pop 2 before i go to the bees when i know i'm going to have a good go through them and really disturb them). We always thought it was a snake bite but i suppose it could have been a number of bee stings too.

The only thing that occurs to me that would provoke such a reaction from the bees is that horses had had a liberal application of some fly spray, which can be pretty potent stuff, and the bees following, the disturbance of their hives went into defence/attack mode.

They are big animals (the horses!) but can be surprisigly fragile.
 
As someone who owns horses and bees my sympathies go
out to the lady who lost four horses on one afternoon.

This story may be about to get wider coverage.

The story is being run by Horse and Hound see here:
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/397/308298.html

Yesterday I got a phone call from BBC News looking for a local beekeeper to comment on the story. I refused the interview request as I did not know anything about the story at that point. But I am sure they will run the story on BBC South East Radio and depending on what is in the news cycle at the moment maybe higher up the chain.

Either way it is not good for beekeepers as it may engender some hostility from some sectors of the public.
 
This story becomes more bizzare with every telling.
The previous version of the 'facts' from the local Beekeepers' association email had a horse jumping the fence and knocking all the hives over, now we have "perhaps one horse jumped out and knocked a hive" and now "One of the horses was found dead on the afternoon of the attack, while another died the following day. Both were assumed to have suffered anaphylactic shock [intense allergic reaction] and heart failure. The other two drowned in a pond, presumably fleeing the bees." Instead of the other three horses being attacked after coming over to see what had happened to the first one in the previous version. Assumed..
And do horses drown themselves rather than being stung?

I also note the statement "I've since been told by the Beekeepers Society that bees don't like the smell of horses" -Is this a fact?
I would have hoped that the local society would have gotten all their facts, including this one, straight before publicising this story.

This type of report can only do damage to the relationship between beekeepers and horse owners/farmers etc. As far as I can see this event is unprecedented worldwide, even including attacks by 'Africanised' bees. Whilst I feel sorry for the dead horses and their owner I would like to know the real story.

Can anyone shed light on what actually happened?
 
Last edited:
Is that the way anaphylatic shock works? I would have thought that an animal suffering sever anaphylatic shock would not last 24 hours but would die within minutes/hours.
 
greatbritishhoney said:
Is that the way anaphylatic shock works? I would have thought that an animal suffering sever anaphylatic shock would not last 24 hours but would die within minutes/hours.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, anaphylactic shock kills in minutes!
Louise
 
Brian Bush said:
Have you read today's Daily Telegraph??
Click to expand...

Well it is in the
Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008942/Two-horses-drown-die-shock-attacked-angry-swarm-bees.html?ito=feeds-newsxml including another feature about "Swarm of Bees Attacks Clothes Shop!

Daily Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/06/28/four-horses-killed-by-swarm-of-bees-115875-23231435/


and weird blogs http://thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/06/two-horses-drown-and-two-die-from-shock.html again quoting the shop attack.

So the story is really running now and we may see further tabloid revelations
 
The same story was reported on Radio 2 news this morning....

Four horses died in ? Sussex. A hive was knocked over. 2 (?) horses died of bee stings and the other 2 drowned when they jumped into a nearby river.
 
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