Health issues, trauma linger for Tri-State man stung 20k by bees

RIPLEY, Ohio (WXIX) - A local man still walks around with bee venom in his system months after he suffered 20,000 stings.

Austin Bellamy is out of the hospital after the incident on Aug. 26. His recovery is ongoing.

“It’s going to be anywhere from six months to a year to get the venom all out of me,” Bellamy said Monday.

Bellamy nearly lost his life in the bee attack, which happened as he was up in a lemon tree trimming branches. At one point, he unknowingly cut into a nest.

“It looked like he had a black blanket on his head down to his neck, down to his arms,” Bellamy’s mother, Shawna Carter said at the time.

The 20-year-old’s uncle and grandmother watched the entire episode unfold from the ground, unable to scale the ladder because they themselves were under attack.

UC Air Care transported Bellamy to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was put on a ventilator and a medically induced coma.

He ingested around 30 bees in total. Doctors had to suction them out of him. It took days.

The physical residue of the bees remain in Bellamy’s system. The emotional scars—for both him and his family—are just as long-lasting.

Perhaps longer.

“I tell you, you just get one bee around me, and I’m creeped,” Bellamy said. “I’m ready to run.”

Just as triggering are the sounds—not just the bees swarming in and around him, but the tool in his hands and the work he was doing.

“My emotions, I got to buckle them up just to try and run a chain saw,” Bellamy said.

His mother, Shawna Carter, and his grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, are living out echoes of the trauma as well.

“That day, I never want to see that day again,” said Edwards, who was also hospitalized. “Flashbacks... They don’t go nowhere. I have them in the back of my head. I think about it all the time.”

Bellamy has doctor’s appointments every two weeks to have blood drawn and x-rays done. He says he still has breathing issues.

Doctors tell him he will make a full recovery eventually.

“He’s my hero,” Edwards said. “He’s a little fighter. I don’t know what I’d do without him. That boy’s my world.”

Added Bellamy, “I just appreciate all the Fire and EMS and their fast response and everything they did for me. If it wasn’t for them, I probably wouldn’t be standing here today.”

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