The incident occurred on Monday morning when a coach carrying around 60 passengers veered off the road and crashed in an area where African honeybees were being kept in hives.
According to local reports, the angry bees reacted to the disturbance caused by the accident and stung 45 passengers as they tried to escape from the vehicle. The victims suffered multiple stings, and although the coach was severely damaged, medics attributed the cause of death to the insect stings.
Initially, four people were reported dead, but it later emerged that two of the most seriously injured victims had passed away in the hospital. Among the deceased were a 47-year-old woman named Eneyda Torrez Zelaya and her daughter Andrea Carolina Garcia Torrez, eight, and an 84-year-old woman identified as Reyna Isabel Olivas Montalvan. A four-year-old boy is currently in critical condition in Victoria Mota Hospital in Jinotega, the nearest city to the crash site.
The incident occurred in the municipality of San Sebastian de Yali, about 115 miles north of Managua, the Nicaraguan capital. Pictures and videos of the injured showed red welts all over their upper bodies, and some were transported to the hospital in the back of ambulances amid crowds of distressed people.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the accident, but initial reports suggest that mechanical faults caused the 22-year-old driver to lose control of the vehicle.
Africanised bees are a hybrid of the western honey bee and are typically more defensive, reacting faster to disturbances and chasing people further than other varieties of honey bees.
They have been responsible for killing more than 1,000 humans, and victims receive ten times more stings than from European honey bees. The insects have also been blamed for the deaths of horses and other animals they have attacked.
