30,000 Bees Swarm In Astoria But Local Beekeeper Says NYPD Overreacted

An estimated 30,000 bees swarmed in a residential block of Astoria yesterday, prompting the NYPD to send in its bee removal team to kick some beeswax. The NYPD's bee guy, Anthony Planakis, a.k.a. @TonyBees on Twitter, described it as a "massive" swarm, telling DNAinfo, "This thing was huge. I didn’t really know until I got up in the air. I looked at the guy and said, 'We're gonna need a bigger truck.' "

Planakis used a special vacuum to safely remove the bees from a tree on 28th Avenue near 48th Street; he reportedly removed a whopping 12 pounds of bees, and will be delivering them to a nice apiary upstate. Yes, that's what Dad said about your cat Sniffles when she wouldn't stop peeing on the stereo, but we'll just have to take Planakis's word for it.

Police and neighbors tell CBS 2 that the bees likely escaped from a rooftop hive owned by area beekeeper MIke Barrett. But he insists the NYPD overreacted to the swarm, and no one was ever in any danger. “It looks very dramatic because you see the bees in one place but this is the calmest time you’ll ever see the bees,” Barrett assured everyone.

We asked Planakis this morning about Barrett's assertion that the NYPD overreacted. Planakis counters, "You have to understand that the bees are docile in swarm mode. However, when you have conditions like I had yesterday with an excess of 30,000 bees weighted on a branch close to the sidewalk, with the barometer dropping, and inclement weather coming in... If it started raining at that time, that docile condition is going to change."

"When the water hits the bees, they're going to cluster up tight, which means there's going to be added weight on that branch," Planakis elaborates. "And it's happened to me already that the branch breaks due to the weight of the beach. When that happens, guess what? The bees are suffering, and if someone is walking down the street, all it takes is one sting if that person is allergic. Now we have a problem. That's how I look at it. That person is going to start flailing, they're going to run right into the street and God forbid get hit by a car."

Planakis has been handling bee emergencies for two decades for the NYPD. "I've worked with everything from Caucasian bees, Italian bees, Carniolan bees, something comparable to a black bee, you name it." Here he is in action on another bee job.

Tony Planakis At Work from Doug Magee on Vimeo.

Referring to Barrett, the Astoria beekeeper, Planakis says, "You can defend yourself however you want, but you have to look at it from the extreme end of the spectrum also. And it's there. God knows what would have happened. If someone would have been hit by that swarm, they would have panicked and run right into oncoming traffic just to get away from it."

Needless to say, some neighbors want the city to "do something" about Barrett's hives, which are currently legal. He insists he's tried to "work with the neighbors," but "bees sometimes have a problem with water. They’re attracted to water that’s why I have this barrel out front." If everyone in Astoria can just cool it with the standing water, they won't have to worry about a swarm of 30,000 bees carrying their babies away.