RAMONA - On Sunday night, O'Dean Negron and Robert Sisson met some neighbors they didn't know they had - 50,000 of them.

Negron was walking the couple's dog on their Ramona ranch that night when he noticed a few bees around the pet's muzzle. The dog escaped with a handful of stings, but newly adopted goats Ed and Fred weren't so lucky. On Monday, Ed was still swollen from the colony's stings but alive. Fred, despite a cocktail of antihistamines and aspirin, didn't survive.

Warm summer weather makes bees more active and can lead to the kind of swarming that has taken place in more than one North County city recently.

Earlier this month, a swarm took the blame for a San Pasqual Valley truck accident that sparked a 40-acre wildfire and left chicken carcasses strewn across the road. On Saturday, a frenzy erupted in Oceanside when a car crashed into a streetlight pole that bees had colonized. One woman reportedly suffered 50 stings during the Oceanside attack but was not seriously harmed.

Ordinary summer weather has combined with drought to make bees more active than usual, according to David Kellum, entomologist with San Diego County's agriculture department.

"We're in the second year of a drought so there's a shortage of food out there," Kellum said. "If there's a shortage of water or food, they're going to be moving around more."

True swarms, he said, are not actually dangerous - swarms are made up of bees just looking for a safe place to settle near food and water.

"They're not interested in you at all. … They are not very aggressive when they're swarming. They have no honey and they have no young to protect," Kellum said.

"If there's a nest that's become established … that's another situation."

Jeff Russell, field manager for Adkins Bee Removal, said a nest was behind the attack on the Ramona goats.

He said the hive that housed the colony in the walls of a shed was probably several years old and held approximately 50,000 Africanized honeybees, a more aggressive strain than traditional European honeybees.

Kellum said that about 80 percent of the county's wild bees are Africanized. The less aggressive wild bees are the result of commercial beekeeping, he said. Kellum said that though the wild bee population is down from what it was one year ago, there are still more bees in the county since the Africanized bees appeared here nearly a decade ago.

Negron said he isn't sure what provoked the bees that attacked his goats. Neither he nor Sisson were aware there was a huge nest near where they kept the animals.

Kellum warned against people taking bee matters into their own hands. Don't spray a swarm or nest with water, he said, and don't throw things at them.

A bees nest is a liability, according to Kellum. He said the county will only step in to remove a nest if it is on leased county property, but that there are at least 25 companies in the county that, like Adkins, specialize in bee removal.

Russell said Adkins technicians will retrieve and keep bees that are already in boxes, but exterminate bees that work their way into buildings.

"(The technician) has to open up the wall. He's got to remove all the honeycomb or the bees will just keep coming back," Russell said.

Adkins' services at the Ramona ranch will cost $498, including extermination of the insects and removal of their nest.

"It can be expensive to have bees removed … but it's well worth the piece of mind," Kellum said.

- Contact staff writer Colleen Mensching at (760)740-3524 or cmensching@nctimes.com.