Bee lovers furious at slaying of swarm that interrupted a San Diego Padres ballgame

A 30-minute delay Sunday in a San Diego baseball game to remove a bee swarm from an on-field microphone has some fans angry — but not at the interruption.

Beekeepers and other boosters of the industrious insects are instead furious that the San Diego Padres appeared to have called in an exterminator to kill the bees, KGTV reported.

The Padres hosted the Miami Marlins at Petco Park on Sunday afternoon, but the bee swarm took over a microphone near a dugout in the third inning, KSWB reported.

An exterminator in a beekeeping suit sprayed the bees from a ladder, then used a vacuum to remove the slain insects from the field, according to the station.

The backlash was swift.

“Killing one bee colony maybe feels insignificant,” said Hilary Kearney of GIrl Next Door Honey, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. “But they had an opportunity to set an example. They have a huge audience and the example they are setting is that it’s OK to kill bees, that nature doesn’t matter because human activities are more important.”

“The Padres should be ASHAMED!!” read one Twitter post. “I was at the game and could not believe my eyes when the exterminator showed up, sprayed the bees and then vacuumed them up. Whoever made the ignorant decision to do that in front of the fans, and the whole city, needs to be fired!”

“@Padres just killed an ENTIRE SWARM of bees...why?? Bc they were inconvenient,” read another Twitter post.

“Killing honeybees is never cool. But doing it on live TV is worse,” wrote another person on Twitter.

“I’m so disappointed. You could have easily relocated this swarm of bees,” read another Twitter post.

Hobbyist beekeeper Jessica Hale vowed not to renew her season tickets until the team apologizes and comes up with a better policy for dealing with bees, KGTV reported.

Two New York City beekeepers who work with the city’s police department to remove problematic swarms and hives also took offense, the New York Post reported.

“This was not handled humanely,” NYPD Bees wrote on Twitter. “These honeybees were killed by an extermination company instead of having a beekeeper come and remove them.”.

Rob Cartwright, one of the owners of Cartwright Termite & Pest Control, which exterminated the bees, said it was too dangerous to try to move the bees because some were still flying around the stadium, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

“It wasn’t like the decision wasn’t thought out,” Cartwright said, according to the publication. “There’s not enough bees in the clump. You start messing around with the bees, we could get a bunch of people stung.”

The Padres did not respond to requests for comment about the brouhaha, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

There were no reports of anyone being stung in the incident, KGTV reported.

Jeffery Lutz of Bee Better Bee Removal in San Diego said he’d also prefer to move the bees but conceded it was a tricky situation with the large crowd, KGTV reported.

“It’s just unfortunate whenever it’s captured on camera like that and you have a bunch of dead bees on the ground,” Lutz said, according to the station. “It doesn’t bode very well when people are watching that.”

He said exterminators across the U.S. are seeing “basketball-size swarms” because of recent rains, KGTV reported.

During the game, the Padres joked about the situation on the team’s Twitter feed, at one point posting “NOOOOOOOPE no no no” with photos of the bees.

Players seemed to take the situation in stride, reported the Associated Press.

““That was the first I’ve ever seen that, I think,” said pitcher Trevor Richards of the Marlins. “I just went in and sat down for a little bit. They told me it was going to be at least 10 minutes. I kind of just took it as almost like another break for an inning.

The Padres went on to lose the game 9-3 to the Marlins.

This story was originally published June 4, 2019 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Bee lovers furious at slaying of swarm that interrupted a San Diego Padres ballgame."