A horse stung to death two weeks ago most likely was stung by feral honey bees and, like a small percentage of people, was hypersensitive to their venom, Montana’s state entomologist and apiarist said.

“They look like bees to me,” Cam Lay of the Montana Department of Agriculture said after viewing a picture of the insects collected by Tim McKee after they stung and killed Fury, his 14-year-old horse, on June 15.

“The wing venation, overall body shape, hairiness, expanded femur on the hind leg — all are consistent with a honey bee,” Lay said.

That same identification was made by Ruth O’Neill, a research associate with the Wanner Crop Entomology Lab at Montana State University in Bozeman.

“I’m 100 percent certain that’s what it is,” O’Neill said.

McKee said he and his family were at a house window watching Fury comically scratch his back on a tree when part of a swarm of the bees fell out of the tree and onto the horse’s back, stinging it and sending it running and bucking.

Fury quickly went into anaphylactic shock and, despite intensive care from a local veterinarian, had to be put down less than 15 hours later as his condition worsened.

A small percentage of people, about two in a thousand, are hypersensitive to the venom from bee stings. The same holds true for other mammals such as horses, Lay said, calling the fatal incident with Fury an “unfortunate convergence.”

The honey bees that stung and killed Fury were not the more aggressive Africanized honey bees that are found in the Southwest, Lay said. He stressed that those bees are not found in Montana and likely never will make it this far north.

“I absolutely do not think this is a case of killer bees, Africanized bees or any type of unprovoked mass attack. Honey bees don’t do that,” Lay said. “Now, if I was an 800-pound horse rubbing on a tree where a hive was, yeah, they might come after me.”

Honey bees will set out to start new hives and swarms of such bees generally are completely docile and harmless. They become defensive only when they are established in a new hive with stores of honey and young to protect.

“I would suspect this unfortunate horse chose to scratch his back on a tree with a feral hive in it and they decided for whatever reason that he was a threat,” Lay said.

The honey bees kept by commercial beekeepers are managed for gentleness, Lay said. There are many such beekeepers in Montana and in the Flathead Valley.

“Beekeepers do not tolerate aggressive hives, because they’re picking them up, loading them on a truck and taking them to orchards in California or Washington or Oregon and bringing them back ... You can’t transport bees that are hostile and you can’t have them out in an orchard where people are working if they are hostile,” Lay said.

“This feral hive for whatever reason escaped that selection process for gentleness.”

People who see a swarm of honey bees gathered on a tree or bush can generally wait for the bees to move along or call a beekeeper who will be happy to come out and get them, Lay said.

“If they’re flying in or out of a hole in your house or a tree or setting up shop somewhere you don’t want them to be, at that point they’re a pest,” Lay said.

McKee said he has seen an outpouring of support from others in the Flathead Valley and a great deal of interest and concern about the insects that killed Fury, a horse his 15-year-old granddaughter Ronalea in Marion had trained for O-Mok-See competition.

That support has included cards, letters, phone calls and even offers of new horses.

“There’s some pretty wonderful people here,” McKee said.

One man in Whitefish offered to give McKee a 5-year-old horse now that his own children are off in college and don’t ride it any more.

“We went up and looked at it and brought the granddaughter along and those two just fell in love. She just called me from Marion and said they’re off on their first ride,” McKee said Wednesday.

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.