A Texas farmer died on Sunday after he was reportedly attacked by bees. The 53-year-old victim, Rogerio Zuniga, was found lying on his field covered with bees.

According to the local authorities, the victim had disturbed an enormous beehive in Lozano, Texas on Sunday. Zuniga was reportedly on his tractor when he struck an 18-inch diameter pipe, where the bees were living inside. According to ABC 6, the bees swarmed from the abandoned irrigation pipe and killed the farmer. Though he apparently tried to run back to his house to escape, he never made it.

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"I think it was about a hundred yards from the tractor, from what I understand. So he tried to come back to the house, towards his house," San Benito Fire Chief Raul Zuniga said, Standard Times quoted. "He was on his tractor and a disk and he was pulling it and apparently hit a pipe where we ended up finding the bees."

The chief, who's the victim's cousin, added firefighters pulled out about 25 feet long and 18 inches wide of bee hive in the concrete irrigation pipe, which comes out of the canal to irrigate the field. And with the size of the hive, it was believed that it had been there for a long time.

Even though the authorities are not exactly sure when the attack occurred, they said the farmer was attacked by probably thousands of bees.

"I don't know how many times he got stung. He got stung hundreds of times. But there were definitely bunches of bees. You can't imagine," the chief said.

Witnesses said they saw the tractor jackknifed and the farmer was nowhere to be found. But when they went out to look for him, he was covered in bees and already dead.

"He had gaping wounds, the bees shredded him basically. It was horrible," Rogerio's sister Lisa Zuniga said, ABC 8 News reported.

In the area, bees have always been a problem. However, it was not to the extent of someone getting killed by bee attacks. The local authorities also said the weather has been causing the bees to swarm and most colonies are infected with a more aggressive bee species, the African bees.

TagsBee Hive Murder, Bees, death