Here's What To Do If You're Attacked By A Swarm Of Bees

Unless you're half honey badger or wholly insane, you know not to incur the wrath of bees. And even honey badgers — which have been known to fight off lions and survive venomous snake bites, have been killed by these striped assassins. Heck, the largest land animals on the planet scurry like frightened mice at the mere sound of bees. Science Magazine writes that elephants have an alarm call specifically devoted to warning each other when they hear the angry buzz of dagger-butts coming. Hopefully, the warning sounds like Nicolas Cage screaming, "Not the bees!" through a trumpet.

Luckily, unlike Nicolas Cage, elephants know how not to get Wicker-Manned in the face. And unlike honey badgers, they aren't so hopelessly addicted to that sweet, sweet natural crack called honey that they're willing to die just to get a taste. In fact, it turns out that elephants are actually great bee survival instructors who can show you what to do if you start getting stabbed by a bloodthirsty hive.

In what sounds like an episode of Punked: Jungle Edition, scientists in Zimbabwe decided to scare the bee-jesus out of 17 elephant families by blasting the sound of recorded bees. As Live Science describes, 16 families "fled within 80 seconds of hearing the bee sound, and half responded within just 10 seconds." If ever you find yourself getting attacked, you ought to run, too. Speaking with ABC, entomologist Dr. Justin O. Schmidt said, "Don't hesitate. Don't fight them. All you're going to do is give them time to get hundreds and thousands more. Just get out of there."

If you swat bees, they will assume you want to assassinate their queen and try to fight you even harder. There's no need for you to pick that fight anyway because they will make their evil intentions known upfront. If a bee wants to start a fly-by stabbing, it will headbutt you. Take that as your cue to fly like Dumbo because the "entire hive" is about tol butt you with bee-hinds. If you haven't triggered a bee's killer instinct, you can try to "blind" it to your presence. No, don't try to poke its eyes — that's fighting. Just don't breathe. A bees' primary sense is smell, says Schmidt. So if it can't smell your halitosis, it can't find you as easily. And if you do get stung, get that stinger out as fast as possible to minimize the amount of venom that enters you.