InsiderBLM AfricaSixty-three endangered African penguins have been killed by a swarm of bees in a rare occurrence near Cape Town, bird conservationists in South Africa say.
The protected birds, from a colony in Simonstown, were found on the shore with multiple bee-stings.
They had no other physical injuries.
National parks officials told the BBC this was the first known attack at the world-famous Boulders Beach, which attracts up to 60,000 visitors a year.
“Usually the penguins and bees co-exist,” said Dr Alison Kock, a marine biologist with South Africa’s national parks agency (SANParks).
“The bees don’t sting unless provoked – we are working on the assumption that a nest or hive in the area was disturbed and caused a mass of bees to flee the nest, swarm and became aggressive,” she added.
“Unfortunately the bees encountered a group of penguins on their flight path.”
Post-mortems found that the birds had been stung around the eyes, and a number of dead bees were found at the scene.
One of the penguins had been stung 27 times.
“This is a very rare occurrence. We do not expect it to happen often, it’s a fluke,” clinical veterinarian David Roberts, from the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, told the AFP news agency.
African penguins are distinctive for their small size, and live on the coast and islands of South Africa and Namibia – though some have been spotted as far north as Gabon.
Their populations are rapidly declining, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says, in main part because of commercial fishing and what it calls “environmental fluctuation”.
Cape honeybees are part of the local ecosystem, which features several conservation areas.
A dead penguin was also found on Friday on nearby Fish Hoek which had also suffered multiple bee-stings, according to SANParks.
The national body said in a statement on Sunday that it was still conducting toxicity and disease checks of the birds, and would continue to monitor the situation.
