**WARNING: This story contains graphic photos.**
Six people, including a mother and her 8-year-old daughter, were stung to death by a swarm of “killer bees” during a bus ride in Nicaragua earlier this week.
A bus carrying 60 passengers was making the hour-long journey from Jinotega to San Sebastián de Yalí in Nicaragua on Monday when the vehicle skidded off the road and plunged 165 feet down a ravine, according to local reports via the New York Post.
While all passengers survived the initial terrifying drop, the bus landed in a coffee plantation field that was home to a number of disturbed – and angry – killer Africanized bees.
Six people ultimately died from the killer bees’ stings and 14 others were hospitalized after the incident.
The New York Times reported the victims as: Reyna Isabel Olivas Montalván, 84; Santos Arnulfo Calderón Castellón, 38; Dilcia Flores Amparo, 32; and Kenia Jazmín Soza Bonilla, 19.
Also, among the dead were Eneyda Tórrez Zelaya, 47, and her 8-year-old daughter Andrea Carolina.
According to the USDA, the Africanized honey bee, also known as the killer bee, is a cross-breed between the European honey bee and the African honey bee.
The so-called killer bee is the result of experiments in Brazil decades ago. The insects then migrated to the U.S.
Although weather is a factor, a normal bee season runs from mid-March through October.
The bees also constantly on guard for possible threats to their hive, and even find the color of a shirt or scent of cologne as threatening.
Health officials advise people who disrupt a beehive to cover their heads, run away and take shelter, and not to flail their arms.