Mississippi ? A swarm of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of bees attacked an 80-year-old man and killed his pet beagle Thursday, and agriculture officials said it could be the state’s first brush with the infamous Africanized “killer” bees.

“Bees were all over the place out here, all along for a couple of blocks back, flying through there,” said Robert Cherry, who was stung six times in the head. “They just went wild.”

Cherry was wheeling a garbage can to his house when he saw a cloud of bees attacking his dog, Theo. The dog was stung more than 1,000 times.

State entomologist Harry Fulton said, “This is an isolated incident, we hope.”