Bee Careful

mountain biking, outdoors, rock climbing | dlacord | Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 11:03 am

I was just talking with a friend of mine last night about a terrifying mountain bike ride she did recently outside Steamboat Springs. She was riding a rough trail when she was attacked by angry bees. As she tried to brush them off and escape their rage, she hit a hard bump, was knocked head-first off her bike, and fell down a six-foot drop-off, landing in, of course, prickly weeds.

She’s OK, but she said she later heard that bees had attacked others on area trails, and that they are known to be especially angry this time of year. We wondered together if that happens in other places and on other trails.

Then I saw local climber/author Stewart Green’s blog on his climbing page at about.com and his post about bees attacking an Arizona climber last week on Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. According to Green, the climber disturbed a hive of Africanized honeybees. He tried to get away but was stranded on a cliff, and by the time he was rescued, he had been stung more than 120 times.

Green says this wasn’t the first time climbers and scramblers were attacked on that same mountain, including a 2004 attack when a climber tried to flee from the bees, fell, and was killed.

The Steamboat bees weren’t the deadly Africanized strain, but it’s still frightening to think about a bee attack on a trail. My friend and I wondered if there was anything she could have done to deter the bees.

The USDA posts some tips on its site. Most are common-sense stuff, and don’t offer any new advice for mountain bikers : “be careful when using machinery that produces sound vibrations or loud noises.”(?)

The only tips that could apply to mountain biking or hiking: