PASADENA – A family in Pasadena is shaken up after their 1-year-old son, his mother and their dog were attacked by bees.
“The vet said if we wouldn’t have brought her in, she would have definitely died. What if we were not home. There was no notice or nothing,” Sarah Davis said.
The frightening situation was caught on camera. The beehive is located inside an electrical box in the neighbor’s yard and a banana tree. The family said CenterPoint Energy never gave them any notice or warning when they tried to remove the bees.
It only took Sarah Davis about five seconds to realize her dog Sophie was being attacked by hundreds of bees.
“She was running back and forth, and I was like ‘why is she acting so crazy’ because sometimes she gets really excited,” Davis said.
Surveillance video captured the pup crying and barking out for help as the buzzing insects swarmed and stung her. Sarah used her robe to hit them off.
“They started attacking me all over my back and my arms,” she said.
Davis ran inside the house; the bees followed and stung her 1-year-old son.
“I started having a panic attack. I called my husband hysterically saying Sophie is going to die. She has been attacked by bees,” she said.
Sophie was rushed to a vet where doctors removed over 200 stingers from her body.
“She was in severe pain. She was bleeding from her inside. She couldn’t open her eyes. They were inside her mouth,” Davis said.
Christian Medina lives next door and said the bees have a hive inside an electrical box that belongs to CenterPoint and one nesting on a banana tree.
“We haven’t been back there honestly in months,” he said.
After going back and forth with CenterPoint Energy for months about the pesky problem, Medina said a beekeeper came to his home Thursday morning.
“To my knowledge, they went back there. They quote-unquote extracted the bees, but I get home and they are all over the place still there. I don’t know exactly what they did,” Medina said.
The Davis family said they were not given a notice or warning from CenterPoint about the bee problem or the contractor who attempted to remove them.
“What I really want is to prevent this from happening again because what if my wife or my son was allergic to bees, they could have died,” Michael Davis said.
In a statement, CenterPoint Energy said:
“CenterPoint Energy has been made aware of this unfortunate situation and our representatives have been in contact with the customer to evaluate next steps.
“CenterPoint Energy contracts qualified bee removal services to safely remove bees and hives from our infrastructure. They strive to do their best to minimize any impact of the removal of, in some cases, tens of thousands of bees from neighboring residents and their pets. Should a customer see bee activity or hives on CenterPoint Energy’s infrastructure, we ask that they contact us so we can address the situation before it becomes a serious issue.”
Medina and the Davis family said they are reaching back out to CenterPoint again about the problem. The family spent over $1,400 at the vet and said CenterPoint should pay the bill.