It’s not in eusocial insects’ nature to comprehend that firefighters are there to help in an emergency, their brains simply aren’t evolved enough to understand duty and altruism and all that.
Especially if they’re on fire, when all threats to the hive real or imagined must be stung, as happened to a crew from CalFire last week, according to the Modesto Bee (no relation). Firefighters responded to a small brush fire on Sonora Road in east Stanislaus County which had started in an apiary. The beekeepers had accidentally ignited it when using a smoker to scare the bees out of their hive boxes in order to gather honey. The fire was put out fairly quickly and only a few on the firefighters were stung by flaming bees. The apiary lost about $40,000 worth of bees and honey in the incident.