On Monday, a beekeeper in China set a new Guinness World Record by covering himself with almost 1.1 million bees collectively weighing 240 pounds.

Gao Bingguo withstood being stung more than 2000 times by the dozens of queen bees in Liangzhuang, Tai'an city in China's Shandong province. The body temperature of 55-year-old beekeeper increased drastically at one point.

Wearing only his underpants, he kept on smoking a cigarette in order to keep the bees from stinging his lips.

Fellow beekeepers started by first placing a number of queen bees on his body to help attract worker bees. Boxes of bees were later dumped at his feet in increasingly large numbers as the bees crawled on his entire body except his mouth.

Binguo smoked a cigarette to prevent the bees from swarming his lips. He has beaten a previous world for the heaviest coat of bees on the body, which was set at about 188 pounds. Bingguo has kept bees for over 35 years.

Fellow beekeepers first placed a number of queen bees on his body to help attract worker bees. Later, boxes of bees were dumped at his feet in increasingly large numbers. The bees crawled on his entire body, except his mouth.

Deaths due to bee stings are rare as the average person is capable of safely tolerating up to 10 stings for every pound of their body weight.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, only about one or two for every 1,000 people in the population are truly hypersensitive or allergic to bee stings.

It is important to first remove the stinger when a person gets stung by the bee as the muscles in it will continue pumping venom into the body even though the bee has been removed.