Seven-year-old girl stung 300 times by swarm of wasps

Little Evie fell on the nest leading the wasps to swarm. Photo / Samara Zeitsch supplied to news.com.au

A seven-year-old girl is said to be lucky to be alive after she was stung at least 300 times by a swarm of European wasps.

Evie Clark, from Braidwood in southern New South Wales near Canberra, was playing by a creek on 11 April when she fell on a wasp nest.

Initially, she was stung by a single wasp but then the rest of the nest engulfed her, reported The Canberra Times.

"They were in her underwear, in her shoes. It was terrifying," Evie's mum Samara Zeitsch said.

By the time her father reached her to rush her to hospital, the little girl had blacked out and had to be given an adrenaline shot to revive her.

Zeitsch said nurses had to vacuum up the wasps to get them off the girl, including some in her hair.

Evie Clark was stung around 300 times by a swarm of bees. Photo / Samara Zeitsch supplied news.com.au

"This was an unprecedented number of stings she sustained, it was a bit unknown how it would unfold from there," she said.

Speaking to news.com.au, Zeitsch encouraged people to get rid of European wasp nests because they were "breeding out of control over the country".

Doctors told her it was the sheer number of stings was the equivalent of being bitten by a brown snake.

That evening, Evie's skin swelled up with welts from the stings.

"She's back home and she's doing well. It's very hard to face that reality that it was touch and go, we could've lost her," Zeitsch told The Canberra Times.

A single wasp can alert other wasps to swarm around a perceived threat.

European wasps are far more aggressive than native wasps, such as the more docile paper wasp, and have no known natural predators.

Zeitsch said: "I'd implore people to do their bit to identify European wasp nests and get rid of them. The wasps have no predators and are breeding out of control over the country".

Vic Health advises that paper wasps are longer and thinner than European wasps and have orange-brown antennae; European wasps have all black antennae.

Paper wasps' back legs dangle down during flight while European wasps hold their legs close to their bodies. The native wasp also has distinctive nests with visible hexagonal cells above the ground. European wasp nests are rarely seen.

Zeitsch encouraged people to donate to the NETs helicopter service, that ferried her daughter to hospital, Ronald McDonald House, where they stayed, and regional hospitals.