Hot rod draws a buzz

Security at the Palouse Hot Rod Show this year was ready for a fist fight or maybe a theft, but no one was expecting the swarm of 12,000 honey bees that descended on a car parked in front of the Green Frog restaurant.

“It made its way through the car show,” Palouse Police Chief Jerry Neumann reported on the path of the swarm. “They basically filled up the whole passenger side door panel. It was crazy.”

The inside panel of the car door was inches thick with bees surrounding the queen and thousands more buzzed in circles around the vehicle.

Officers cleared a spot around the bright yellow 1931 Ford Coupe, owned by Sid Guevara out of Plummer. Festival crowds steered clear of the swarming mass. No one was stung.

Neumann called in beekeeper Mike Poch of Pullman. The beekeeper believed the swarm came in on the east end of town before settling on the car. Typically, swarming bees follow the queen of the hive as she searches for a new place to build a hive.

“We took the door panel off. The bees were just packed in there like they were making a new hive,” Neumann said. “He was able to locate the queen bee and scoop everything into a cardboard box. The whole thing took probably 30 to 40 minutes.”

Poch estimated the swarm numbered some 12,000 bees who had just left the original hive.

Because bees are very gentle in the first few days of a swarm, Poch said he was able to easily pull them out of the panel of the car door with his bare hands.

“Handful after handful, we put the bees in a box,” said Poch, who is a member of the Palouse Beekeepers Association.

“We could do that without any protective gear,” he said. He added he had a good time educating the surrounding crowd of children about honey bees, even giving them little handfuls of docile bees to hold.

“They put out their hands, and I put bees on their hands,” Poch said.

Jerry Coker, president of the Palouse Beekeepers Association, said a hive will swarm when the population of bees within the original hive gets too big. The bees inside split off, taking a queen with them and then searching out a new home.

The couple from Plummer drove their yellow 1931 Ford Coupe to visit the hot rod show and parked in front of the Green Frog.

“We went to put my jacket in the car. When we walked over there, it was covered in bees,” said Lois Wittrock, girlfriend of the owner of the car, Sid Guevara. Wittrock said officer Neumann was very helpful in locating a beekeeper, as well as councilman Mike Milano in locating a shop vacuum to remove the bees.

“It was pretty amazing nobody got stung through the whole fiasco,” Wittrock said.

What did Poch do with the bee swarm?

After he gathered up the bees, a passerby said he was looking for a swarm for his beehive at home. Poch’s wife Susan gave him the free box of bees, much to Poch’s disappointment. He had his own empty hive at home and had been looking for his own swarm to fill it.

However, when Poch returned home to his empty bee hive in Pullman, the second surprise of the day was waiting for him. While he and Susan had been helping remove the swarm in downtown Palouse, another swarm had moved into his empty hive in Pullman.

“It was the most bizarre thing,” he said with a laugh. “People aren’t going to believe that!”

(Photo by Mike Milano)