KILLER BEES?

So I'm out biking on this local road, and I see what looks like black popcorn bubbling out of a scrubby little tree coming directly up on my right. AACCKKK!!!! They're friggin' BEES!! Coming right AT me! I guess they were just crossing the road (why do bees cross the road?) but I was right in their path and it felt like riding through a hailstorm. They pelted my bare arms, my face, my shirt, made thwapping sounds on my helmet. A few of them stayed with me and appeared to be chasing me for maybe 50 yards. I didn't get stung. Maybe they were just regular honey bees, of which there are many around here. But I never, ever saw a swarm like that.

Actually I thought it was pretty neat, in an academic sort of way, after I was through them and realized I wasn't stung. It was something to see (and feel), that's for sure. I mean, it's not like the sky was black with them or anything, but it's definitely more bees than I've ever seen in one place at one time and was definitely a swarm on the move.

So I looked up "Killer Bees in Arizona" and sure enough, there are colonies of Africanized Honey Bees in this area. They've been identified in AZ since 1993. In fact, Arizona's first AHB fatality was a woman in Apache Junction. Which, as you may know from some of my posts, is the closest identifiable town, about 20 miles away.

Being as how I've had iffy reactions to regular bees and to fire ants and have an Epi-Pen, I guess I better carry it with me when biking and maybe running. I should, anyway, being as how there are bees all around anyway. Cripes, one more thing to carry...