It's the stuff old horror movies were made of: Swarms of angry bees terrorize a small town, an elderly woman is stung to death, police and firefighters are overwhelmed by calls from frantic citizens.
That's actually pretty close to what's going on in Apache Junction, where fire-dispatch logs are filling up with reports of belligerent bees."We got nine bee calls yesterday and expect as many today," Fire Chief Mike Farber said in early November. "We're inundated with calls from people who see just a few bees flying around in their yards."
Bee remover Bill Cote of Mesa said his pager is buzzing with calls from Apache Junction residents who fear attacks.
It wasn't that way until a few weeks ago. Most people reacted to the sight of buzzing bees just as they always have: They ignored them.
But on Oct. 10, 88-year-old Mary Williams of Apache Junction was attacked by Africanized "killer" bees in her yard. Stung as many as 1,000 times, she died a few days later.
That changed everything, Cote said.
"Some people call after they see two or three bees in their back yard around some flowers," he said. "I get up to 25 calls a day. Last year, it was three calls a week. This is crazy."
And it isn't just Apache Junction residents who have a bad case of "killer bee nerves."
At Walter O. Boswell Memorial Hospital in Sun City, five patients were evacuated Friday after a few bees were discovered in their rooms.
Nancy Goodman, hospital vice president, said that the bees were not attacking anyone and that the rooms were sprayed with pesticides before the patients were returned. A hive outside the hospital building was removed by a bee keeper.
Phil Yeager, a spokesman for the Phoenix Fire Department, said his agency was inundated with bee calls on the 911 emergency line Friday after a TV news show advised viewers to call 911 if they saw a swarm of bees.
"We want people to call if their pets, their children or themselves are threatened," he said. "But if the bees are not attacking, call a beekeeper."
Mesa beekeeper Bob Chapman says all the recent concern over bees has been good for business. But, he adds, it's not really necessary.
"People are in a total frenzy about `killer bees,' " he said. "It's sort of like when fire was invented. Some people got burned before they learned how to use it."
Africanized bees are here to stay, Chapman said, but they aren't going to turn the area into a scene from a horror film.
"Right now, about 3 percent of the wild bees have the aggressive gene," he said. "The worst it will get is 20 percent. I'm not worried about it."