A 71-year-old woman in California was recently attacked by 75,000 killer bees. The swarm of bees stung her at least a 1,000 times. The incident occurred Thursday, March 6, The Press Enterprise reported. Lance Davis, owner of Lance Davis Killer Bee Live Removal in Palm Desert said that the bees were in an underground Verizon vault on Lucerne Drive. The Verizon employee was attacked when he opened the vault. The bees later covered the woman head to toe, The Press Enterprise reported. "They're quick to anger, and they are relentless in their attack," Davis told PE. "If it takes the whole hive to protect against an intruder, or someone perceived to be an intruder, they will do it." Five Fire firefighters who helped remove the bees were also stung, according to several media sources. Davis has been a bee keeper since 1970s and is known to tackle even the angriest swarm of killer bees. "My actions are a lot different around them than most people," he told the Banning-Beaumont Patch. "People call me the bee whisperer, believe it or not." Africanized bees are a result of an experiment gone awry in the 1950s. Brazilian scientists attempted to make better honey by importing bees from Africa and interbreeding them with the common European honey bees. Over the years, some bees escaped into the wild and mated with normal honey bees. Colonies of the new Africanized Honey bees eventually moved north and have now been spotted in South Florida, according to The Broward Sheriff's Office. These killer bees came to California in 1994. This map (pdf) shows the presence of Africanized bees in the state.