Bee swarm follows Surprise couple into their home - CBS 5 - KPHO

Talk about a sticky situation that really stung!

Thousands of honeybees attacked a couple at their home near Grand and Reems in Surprise on Thursday.

Fortunately, Dan and Patti Norlin aren't allergic to bees and they don't even have welts where they were stung.

But, they did have quite a scare.

"As you can see, the patio doesn't have any furniture in it and we were about to bring it out from the house," Dan Norlin explained as he told CBS 5 News his story.

He and his wife had just returned from a trip on Thursday afternoon and were cleaning up their patio after Monday's storm.

"This (outdoor) heater had been blown over and was lying through the bushes down in there," said Dan Norlin.

When he picked it up, he accidentally bumped a beehive.

"I got it up and along with it came about 10,000 bees," Dan Norlin said.

It startled his wife who was hosing down the patio.

"They were all like a swarm, like a big swarm," Patti Norlin recalled. "They went right for his head. He was yelling loudly, ‘get in the house! Get in the house!"

She forgot she was holding a garden hose and ran inside with it, which prevented the sliding door from closing all the way, and in came the bees!

"Just a whole hell of a lot of them," Dan Norlin said. "And, they were mad. They chased us around the house and we were swatting them."

Between the two of them, the Norlins suffered nearly 50 bee stings.

"It was really painful," said Patti Norlin. "They got in my hair and I couldn't get them out and I was squishing them, ya know, trying to kill them."

Amazingly, the bees didn't bother with their dog.

"She was looking around at us like we were crazy," said Dan Norlin.

Patti Norlin described what her pooch must have been thinking as she watched her owners hoot and holler, "Oh God, now you do this to me. I've been in a car for three days. You're just wacko people."

As paramedics took the couple to a hospital to be checked out, Surprise firefighters knocked the bees down with foam.

On Friday, a bee specialist removed the hive, filled with bees and honey, which had been hidden in a pot behind some bushes.

"Maybe you'd expect that there's a snake laying there or a coyote," said Dan Norlin. "But, that was a big surprise. That's why they call it (the town) Surprise, I guess."

Dan Norlin said this was his first time being stung by bees and he hopes it will be his last.

A Surprise Fire Department spokesman said one firefighter was stung a couple of times during Thursday's ordeal, but is OK.

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