Bees swarmed my friend sucking on a menthol cough-drop

My friend has an old olive tree on his property and a natural beehive moved in there about a year ago. He does a lot of gardening in his backyard and there's a walking bridging the top and bottom which walks right past the hive opening, so he's walking past it multiple times a day and mostly it's not a problem. He enjoys that they're there.

But the hive opening is at roughly chest level and about a foot away from the walkway, bordered by a wall with an 8' drop, so there's no real way to walk around it.

On this particular day he had a menthol cough drop in his mouth and the bees reeeeally didn't like that, they immediately swarmed him and he had to run for it and got a couple stings near his eye and face.

Anyone have an experience like this before?