A Southern California family returning home after church found their 6-year-old dog covered with bee stings and convulsing in the backyard.

The 40-pound (18-kilogram) Jindo named Inu died minutes later near the hive under an eave of the family's Torrance home.

Joe Park tells the Torrance Daily Breeze that he and his family left for church on Sunday and the dog was happily playing in the backyard. When they returned hours later, she was lying in the yard, covered with hundreds of bee stingers.

A family friend frantically tried to remove the stingers, but the dog died minutes later.

Hive removal expert Don Sorensen says there may have been 25,000 bees in the hive. It's not known if they were aggressive Africanized killer bees.

Source: The Canadian Press