A Reds Game Was Delayed By A Swarm Of Bees On The Field

Spring baseball is a wonderful break from the doldrums of winter and all that comes with it. Flowers bloom, the hopes of baseball teams soar along with the temperatures and massive swarms of bees invade the playing surface to make playing baseball impossible.

At least that last thing was certainly the case in Cincinnati on Monday, as Great American Ballpark along the Ohio River was bombarded with buzzing and awash in stingers during an afternoon tilt between the oldest baseball team in America and the San Francisco Giants. The area behind home plate was swarming with bees, and TV cameras could pick up the critters in action while players tried to get out of the way.

The situation was bad enough that the umpires actually pulled the Reds off the field, as professionals had to come onto the field to try and fix the situation.

This apiary emergency was rectified by people in white coats spraying something. Bees can generally be made more docile by smoke, but certain plants make smoke better suited for it than others. It’s unclear what was used, but it looked pretty hilarious anyway.

https://twitter.com/Reds/status/1125440991681499136

So why did bees descend on a baseball game? Well, this time of year some hives swell in number and create swarms that go in search of new homes. But these bees are not cartographers, damnit, they’re just out there trying to pollenate and make some of that sweet, sweet honey.

Unfortunately they got a bit wayward here, but it was less of an attack than an inter-office conflict. Everyone out here’s just trying to do a job, some workers are just better than others.