A Canadian man faced a swarm of bees head-on when he sat covered in the insects for a record-breaking 61 minutes. He wore a "bee beard" to promote a bee-related film.

Juan Carlos Noguez Ortiz welcomed thousands of honey bees to sit on his face for over an hour Wednesday at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto to promote the release of forthcoming horror film "Blood Honey," which is releasing in September.

Ortiz, a beekeeper at Dickey Bee Honey Farm in Cookstown, beat the previous Guinness World Record of 53 minutes and 34 seconds. Not only did Ortiz awe spectators, he intended to prove that bees can be docile.

"I wanted to show people that they don't have to be scared of the bees," Ortiz told Toronto-based news outlet CBC.

Ortiz said that he has only practiced the stunt two times before he attempted the official performance.

Peter Dickey, the master beekeeper at Dickey Bee Honey Farm, provided the bees for Ortiz’s act. He explained that the team exercised caution and hand-selected gentler bees for the special performance.

"We brought 100,000 bees with us, so there are more bees with us today than ever," Dickey told CBC. "But we brought the gentle ones so that is very important when we are doing bearding."

Ortiz's record-breaking stunt highlighted the release of Blood Honey at Cineplex's Yonge-Dundas Cinema and select theatres across Canada this Friday.

"Well done Juan!" Blood Honey's Twitter account wrote after the record-breaking stunt. "Over an hour having a full head covered in bees for the Guinness World Record attempt."

"Blood Honey" director Jeff Kopas told Huffington Post Australia Thursday that the stunt helped promote the independent film. He explained that without the support of a major studio it's "extremely difficult [and] virtually impossible" to effectively indorse an indie film.

"It was really fun watching people, they couldn't stop staring at him," Kopas said. "He's just a really zen guy and just sat there and basically didn't move."

Though Ortiz ended his stunt unscathed, some species of bees are considered hostile. There are over 20,000 species of bees in the world, according to bee catalog Wasp Removal.

Bees can be dangerous once they sting, as their stingers can trigger a harmful reaction to those with severe bee allergies. There are two types of bees known to sting: the honey bee and the bumble bee.

"Bees that sting can be dangerous to people that are allergic or to anyone that receives enough stings," according to the site. "The two main species of Bee which can sting are Honey Bees and Bumble Bees. Honey Bees can be highly dangerous simply due to the number of individual Bees in a colony."

Bees are responsible for some fatalities in the U.S. Bees are usually housed in hives and can become aggressive once something breaches their territory, as is sometimes the case with beekeepers.

"Normally Bees which are kept in Hives are reasonably well tempered," Wasp Removal noted. "[B]ut occasionally, for various reasons, they can become highly aggressive and will attack anything that ventures near to their nest or hive."

RELATED STORIES
Canada