There's quite a buzz over what went on at the Stockton Ports game the other day. From the Stockton Record:
It came from over the center-field wall during the top of the fourth inning, a dark cloud headed straight for home plate.
Bees. Perhaps 20,000 of them.
Players dived into the dirt or sprinted for the dugout, while the public address announcer asked the crowd to stay calm.
"I just saw something fuzzy coming. And then I heard the buzzing. I thought, oh (expletive), bees!" Stockton Ports manager Webster Garrison said, recalling the dramatic five-minute interruption in Sunday afternoon's game. "I saw everybody hitting the deck and players running, and both dugouts scattering, fans starting to scatter. It was just a weird situation."
Someone at the game posted a video of players hitting the deck, with this introduction...
"A huge swarm of bees crosses the playing field at the Stockton Ports game. I though the players were doing some kind of baseball planking joke but as the bee's reached me I turned off the camera and got down low."
After the swarm buzzed off and headed over to a tree in the parking lot, the team called in an exterminator for a de-beeing. Some folks didn't like that, according to reporter Alex Breitler...
Four people called Tuesday to complain about the apparent extermination of that swarm of bees which descended on the Stockton Ballpark during a Ports game over the weekend...
Callers want to know why a beekeeper wasn’t consulted. Some beekeepers will drive out and collect bee swarms, putting them to beneficial use instead of eradicating them...
Ports President Pat Filippone, quoted as saying the exterminator “came out and zapped them (the bees),” said Tuesday he hasn’t heard any concern from the community. He added that all he knows is the bees were removed by an exterminator — he can’t say for certain how they were killed, or even whether they were killed.
I’ve called the exterminator to ask what the ultimate outcome was — will post here if I get an explanation.