MOODY, Texas, June 3 (UPI) -- A swarm of Africanized bees attacked and killed a Central Texas man and seriously injured a woman trying to help him, officials said.
McLennan County Chief Sheriff's Deputy Matt Cawthon said Larry Goodwin was driving a tractor on his family's land in Moody, Texas, Saturday when the vehicle apparently struck a discarded chicken coop that contained a year-old hive of bees.
The Africanized bees -- which are 10 times more aggressive than typical, European bees -- attacked Goodwin, who then ran to the nearest home, about 50 yards away, the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald reported.
Goodwin turned a water hose on himself and a woman who ran out of the building trying to help him also was attacked by the bees.
Emergency personnel pronounced Goodwin dead at the scene and transported the woman, whose name was not reported, to a hospital in serious condition, Cawthon said.
Allen Miller, owner of Bees Be Gone, destroyed what remained of the hive on Goodwin's land, which had 22 honeycombs and an estimated 40,000 bees. He said it was the sixth hive of Africanized bees he's destroyed so far this year.
"You can't believe how bad they are. They make me want to get out of this business," he said. "They can get up under your clothes where no other insect can go. In a hive of ordinary European bees, about 10 percent will attack if the hive is threatened, but with African bees all of them attack you."
