Oh you can survive an attack. Just depends on the number of times you get hit. They’re no more venomous than the European honeybee.
Just a lot more ornery.
True, no worse individually than any honey bee. But it’s the crazy “defend the hive at all costs, banzai!” attitude that they have that makes them dangerous. Get swarmed by 10,000 of them. No place to go. I don’t want to know what that feels like.
I was watching a program on them recently and common wisdom was that an attacking swarm of them would pursue you 1/2 mile to a mile after initiating the attack. Two guys (in suits) intentionally disturbed a hive of them and those bees chased those guys in excess of 5 miles while attacking them. Imagine that, 5 miles worth of hundreds or thousands of bees attacking you.
Unreal.