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A man who was stung more than 100 times by bees is in critical condition following his rescue from an Arizona mountain over the weekend, officials said.
The Phoenix Fire Department said the hiker was airlifted to safety after technical rescue teams from Phoenix and Glendale responded to Lookout Mountain around 10 a.m. local time Saturday “for reports of a hiker stung multiple times by bees near the summit.”
“Crews located the adult male, who reported over 100 stings and was unable to continue his descent,” the Phoenix Fire Department said. “Firefighters coordinated a hoist operation with Firebird 10 to safely extract the patient from the mountain.”
The man was transferred to a waiting ambulance at the trailhead and taken to the hospital in critical condition, the fire department said.
The Phoenix Fire Department also issued a “bee safety reminder,” telling hikers to “avoid disturbing hives, skip scented products when outdoors, wear light-colored clothing, and if you encounter a swarm – run away quickly and protect your head and face.”
This isn’t the first instance of someone being left in critical condition after multiple bee stings.
In August 2022, an Ohio man was hospitalized after he was stung approximately 20,000 times by bees while cutting tree branches, his family said.
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Austin Bellamy was helping trim branches on a lemon tree when he accidentally cut into a nest full of Africanized killer bees, his mother Shawna Carter wrote on a GoFundMe created to help with Bellamy’s hospital bills.
“He was just covered in bees,” Carter told WCPO. “Screaming and yelling, crying for help.”
Carter told the outlet that her son was put into a medically induced coma at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. She confirmed to FOX19 that he woke up from the coma a few days later.
His grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, was standing below the tree when the bees attacked, but said she was unable to help because she was also under attack.
“When he started cutting them, that’s when the bees came out, and he tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t,” Phyllis told FOX19. “He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ And nobody would help him.”
“I was going to try and climb the ladder to get to Austin… I seen how high he was … but I couldn’t get to him because I was surrounded in bees,” she said.
Bellamy was eventually rescued by the local fire department. Not only was Bellamy stung tens of thousands of times, but the GoFundMe claimed he was also swallowed about 30 of the insects as well.
By October 2022, Bellamy was out of the hospital and his recovery was still ongoing due to the bee venom in his system.
“It’s going to be anywhere from six months to a year to get the venom all out of me,” Bellamy told Fox Now.
— with files from Global News
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
