Bees attacked and killed a farmer yesterday in an area aback of Liverpool Village on the Corentyne as he was returning home from tending to his rice field.
Dead is 45-year-old Jerome O’Brian Scott also known as ‘Bunch’ of Liverpool Village.
According to his son, Michael Scott, he and his father left home in the morning to go “in the backdam to bail water from the rice field”, after heavy rainfall on Wednesday.
After they had completed their work in the backdam, Michael Scott said, they saw a dragline which was clearing drains in the same area. As the operator was making his way out with the machine, he added, they decided to join him for a ride out.
After about fifteen minutes on the machine, he told Stabroek News, “honey bees attack we from nowhere. Me just knock the glass and the man stop and open and we start fuh run.” He said he held his father’s hand as they ran and together they plunged into a nearby trench. Most of the bees were swarming his father, Michael said, and he (Jerome) took another direction. He said when he realized this he called after his father, but he was nowhere in sight.
Then he heard “some groans” and saw his father who appeared to be experiencing some difficulty.
Michael said he told his father, “come in the corner hay” and took him out of the water, even though bees continue to swarm them. He said his father then told him, “son me can’t mek am, gwan [go on]“.
He tried to carry away some of the bees by going away, he said, and at the same time seek help. He found another farmer, ‘Nutman’, who was on a horse, and related the story to him. They both returned to where his father was but “when we meet back deh, he just lie down like he dead with he face inside a water”.
They went back to look for a tractor to transport him home. They found John Corlette, another rice farmer, who brought his father’s body out and took it to the station and then to the Port Mourant Hospital.
Jerome’s wife Pamela Scott, said that he would “go backdam and come home everyday, but me din know that he nah guh come home today,“ as she broke down in tears.