Mem­bers of the pub­lic are be­ing urged to stay away from Palmiste Park, San Fer­nan­do, un­til fur­ther no­tice, fol­low­ing a bee at­tack there that left five peo­ple, in­clud­ing a child, hos­pi­talised on Mon­day.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein made the call yes­ter­day, af­ter an as­sess­ment of the park found sev­en bee hives at the park.

“I urge all cit­i­zens to heed the ad­vice of the au­thor­i­ties and avoid en­ter­ing Palmiste Park un­til fur­ther no­tice. Bee stings can cause se­ri­ous in­jury or even death, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those who are al­ler­gic. We are tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion and en­sure the safe­ty of park users. Let us all ex­er­cise cau­tion and pri­ori­tise safe­ty in our recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties,” Ho­sein said in a state­ment.

Ear­li­er in the day, sprayers Sternard Haynes and Chris Abra­ham, from the min­istry’s Bee Abate­ment Unit, cor­doned off the dan­ger zones with red cau­tion tape af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing the hives.

Not­ing that the bees were prob­a­bly ag­gra­vat­ed by the ac­tiv­i­ties and the noise, Haynes said they ob­served a rope tied to a tree branch and a tyre swing. They al­so found a crick­et bat and ball near the trees.

He said they would re­ceive in­struc­tions from their su­per­vi­sors on the way for­ward but most like­ly the next step would be spray­ing.

“Once we spray the bees and the bees die off they will make con­tact with the Forestry De­part­ment and they will make the nec­es­sary arrange­ment to have the trees and the cav­i­ties cut out to en­sure that the park is safe for the pub­lic,” Haynes said.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as un­for­tu­nate, Ter­rence Hon­oré said he ar­rived af­ter the com­mo­tion, but peo­ple were still in the park and so were the bees. He said they first re­ceived a re­port about the bees in the park by work­ers, and the min­istry per­son­nel sprayed. How­ev­er, he said two weeks ago they got an­oth­er re­port about bees in the in­ner forest­ed area of the park and then last week, they got in­for­ma­tion that bees re­turned to the first tree.

He said ex­perts ex­plained that there is an in­crease in bee ac­tiv­i­ty around this time, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the bush­fires. He said the chal­lenge is that the bees have var­i­ous en­try and ex­it points to their hive so that even if they spray, the bees es­cape and then re­turn to re­build their hives.

Not­ing that African­ised and hon­ey bees were spot­ted in the park, Hon­oré said the trees were old and con­tained large or deep cav­i­ties which made it dif­fi­cult to reach the bees.

While sig­nage alert­ing peo­ple of the in­creased pres­ence of bees is one op­tion, he said peo­ple need to be vig­i­lant when vis­it­ing the park.

As­sur­ing that they were work­ing with stake­hold­ers to mon­i­tor the bee pop­u­la­tion and ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, Hon­oré said, “We want to ex­press our con­cern for those who were stung and tell peo­ple to be very vig­i­lant when­ev­er they use the park to en­sure that they are alert. Look for the hy­per­ac­tive ac­tiv­i­ties of bees and en­sure that you do not dis­turb them. You do not make too much noise. Don’t dance and palance and car­ry on be­cause the bees will re­spond.”

A min­istry crew is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the park to­day.

The at­tack oc­curred around 4.15 pm, in the midst of sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties at the park, in­clud­ing the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion pet­ting zoo and car show event and a birth­day lime.

At least eight peo­ple, in­clud­ing four chil­dren, were treat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing the at­tack.

Con­trary to so­cial me­dia re­ports that one of the in­jured peo­ple, Jef­frey Ram­roop, had died, a rel­a­tive con­firmed that he was re­cov­er­ing at the hos­pi­tal. The four oth­er peo­ple in­clude a woman and her three chil­dren, one of whom is a mi­nor.