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Yellow jackets swarm nursery owner
By RYAN DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times, GOWERS CORNER -- As hundreds of yellow jackets swarmed Dave Spurr, he yelled to his wife. She screamed back: "Run, run, run." "They were so thick I couldn't see through them," said Dave Spurr, 47, who had accidentally dug up their nest with his tractor. "I couldn't tell where to go because they were hitting me in the eyes." He jumped from his tractor and ran north from his tree farm on Kent Grove Drive. Two cars passed; neither stopped. As he ran, he spat yellow jackets. "The nature, the aggressiveness of these bees is what shocked me," Spurr said. "These are relentless. They go to kill. They know what they're doing. They know to go into your nose and your mouth." He ran more than a quarter of a mile. Then, too tired to keep going, he stopped, dropped and rolled in the grass. His wife continued to pull yellow jackets from his ears, neck and legs. It took more than 15 minutes get rid of all of them. Carol Spurr ran beside her husband, batting at the insects. But they had no interest in her. In fact, they stung her just four times, she said. They stung him hundreds of times from ear to foot, he said. More than he can count. Wednesday morning, more than 12 hours after the 6 p.m. attack, Spurr was lying in a bed at Spring Hill Regional Hospital still tweezing dozens of stingers from his body -- including one from his eye, he said. "I feel like I've just been punched all night long," he said. Spurr, who lives in Citrus Park and owns all three locations of Citrus Park Landscaping Nursery with his wife, remained in the hospital Wednesday night. Initially he suffered from low blood pressure and headaches. On Wednesday he was awaiting more tests on his heart. Doctors were unsure how it would respond to the yellow jacket poison, he said. Yellow jackets are some of the deadliest stinging insects in the country, said Pasco beekeeper Bob Porgal. They build nests as big as the bed of a pickup truck, he said. Usually they build in the dirt. In New England, yellow jackets are known as ground hornets. There's nothing they hate more than vibrations in their nests, which can hold as many as 100,000 yellow jackets, said Porgal, who owns Bob's Bee Removal in Hudson. If their nest vibrates, they find who or what did it and follow the scent. "They keep on hanging to their predator," he said. They sting over and over, Porgal said. Yellow jackets don't leave their stinger in a victim, unless they hit the victim at such a high speed that the stinger breaks in the skin. With each sting, they release a neurotoxin that can cause shock, Porgal said. Last year, about 100 people in the United States died from bee stings, including yellow jackets. Three years ago, a 2-year-old boy died after yellow jackets stung him about 200 times at a Town N' Country home he was visiting. "It just depends on how much your body can tolerate," Porgal said. Spurr wasn't sure Tuesday night how much he could take. After his wife called 911 and the paramedics arrived, he looked at the reflection of his face, swollen beyond recognition, in the ambulance window. "I just thought that maybe it's time the Lord wants me," he said. "I felt that I could have died." - Ryan Davis is the police reporter in Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6245, or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245. His e-mail address is rdavis@sptimes.com.
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