Horse Bee Stings

One of our retired Army horses, Bandit, had a bad run in with some bees today.  I had put all the horses in the north pasture so I could unload some sand into the horse pens which are in the south pasture.  The horses were spending the afternoon happily nibbling at the new shoots of grass growing in the north pasture.  It was pretty peaceful save for a little fusing between Regent and Wyatt who is a retired Army horse on our neighbor's property.  Regent and Wyatt are old rivals and it was necessary to discuss a few things over the fence. 

 

Poor Bandit covered in bee stings. 

However, the afternoon calm was shattered by the sound of Bandit, who is lame, galloping madly for the gate to the south pasture.  Debbie heard all this and went out to find Bandit frantically trying to scrape his sides on the fence and kicking at himself.  She saw that he was covered in bee stings.  She let him through to the other pasture and led all the other horses over too.  Fortunately, none of the others had any stings.  Debbie put Bandit into a stall and tried to calm him down, but he was extremely agitated and didn't want her to touch him.  She gave him some antihistamines she had on hand and called the vet to see if there was anything else she could give him other than banamine for the pain. 

 

Bandit calmed down after a while and will spend the night in a stall until he feels better.  I went out into the pasture to see if I could find a hive, but found no sign of any bees.  Apparently a swarm had come through and Bandit just happened to be in the way.  I'm guessing they weren't Africanized bees or Bandit would probably be dead by now.  Its just one more thing you have to watch out for here in Arizona.