GWI meter reader hails heroes who leapt to her aid during bees attack

Quick action by four men saved a 20-year-old Guyana Water Incorporated meter reader from a potential fatal end after she was attacked by a swarm of bees at Enmore, East Coast Demerara last week.

Sentara Alleyne is now in recovery after being stung about her body by the bees. The young woman told Stabroek News that she was working along the Enmore public road when she decided to take a bus and go back to her office. “I was standing on the public road waiting for a bus to go back to the office and a cow was passing behind me and I thought it was a cow fly, you know how cow flies does sting you then fly away, I actually knocked off the insect but I didn’t know what it was,” she said.

The young woman related that after swatting the insect, she began feeling stinging sensations all over her head and realised that she was being attacked by bees. “All of a sudden, I feeling stings in my head. When I checked, bees started surrounding me, stinging me,” she said, recounting that she ran across the road to a gas station.

“There were four men, two was in the vehicle that came in the gas station and like they see that the bees was too much so they drive around and they told me to come across the road. When I ran across the road, they told me to go in the gutter,” Alleyne recounted. She said that she was a bit apprehensive but ended up going in the drain, “I didn’t had a choice. I just had to jump and I ducked like two times and after they see like the bees go, they told me to run in the yard,” she related.  

The 20-year-old thought that the ordeal was over. “But as I reach in the yard, bees start coming again, the same set that was on me is the same set that came back,” said Alleyne.

The four men then quickly came to her aid to get the bees off her. “They gave me a netting to put over me but how the bees were so much, they started to spray Baygon, everything. How the bees were so much, they told me to go under the netting. One of them came out with a netting over him and they sprayed fire extinguisher and they told me to go under the net. The bees were outside just stinging the both of us so the other three men, they got fire extinguisher, one of them throw gasoline. I just feeling the gasoline throwing on me and the bees just dropping,” she said. 

Alleyne recalled that she was in a state of shock and couldn’t even remember how she got to the hospital. “I was like crying and pleading because my breath was actually locked off, I couldn’t breathe at all, I still don’t know how I reach to the hospital.”

The young woman is grateful for the swift action of the men who stepped in to help her. Even though she is not fully recovered and is still having some respiratory problems, Alleyne said that she will be back to work today.