A California rancher recommends horse owners examine their barns for Africanized honeybee hives after two horses stabled on her Menifee property died subsequent to sustaining hundreds of stings.

Africanized bee

About three-quarters of an inch in length, brownish in color and slightly fuzzy in body texture, Africanized honeybees are nearly identical in appearance to European honeybees.

The two Tennessee Walking horses were stabled in a barn containing undiscovered Africanized bee hives at Wagon Wheel Ranch. On July 21 a ranch hand discovered the animals swarmed by the bees, said ranch owner Christa Caudle Schaffer. A veterinarian called to the scene treated the animals with epinephrine (a hormone that stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to increase heart rate and dilate air passages) and dexamethasone (a steroid anti-inflammatory, immune suppressant drug). Both horses later died of anaphylactic shock, Schaffer said

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