A 70-year-old man died on Friday afternoon in southern Charente, following an attack of Asian hornets.
The septuagenarian who was in his field, in Chalais, at the wheel of his agricultural machine was attacked by a cloud of these hornets when he had just hooked their swarm to the passage of his tractor, explained the firefighters.
Beast of beekeepers, this invasive species is considered particularly aggressive when its nest is disturbed or threatened.
Extremely rare
Seriously injured, the man barely had time to warn relatives. Upon arrival, the emergency services found him unconscious and could not resuscitate him. For the firefighters, the victim probably died of anaphylactic shock, that is to say an exacerbated allergic reaction.
It is very rare for Asian hornet bites to lead to a fatal outcome. In France, we hardly count “A few dozen deaths per year”, allergist Madiha Ellafi told an AFP correspondent.
The Asian hornet yellow legs
(Vespa velutina nigrithorax) which began to colonize part of Western Europe, itself probably arrived by chance in 2004 in a shipment of pottery from China, delivered to Lot-et-Garonne, from where it swarmed.
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