‘I literally cannot control the bees’: Beekeeper faces lawsuit from woman who claims her bees are committing ‘pollen theft’

Inevitably there comes a time when your neighbors will do something that gets under your skin. Perhaps they park in your driveway, play their music a tad too loud, or pollinate your flowers without your express consent. 

If that last line rings close to home for you and you’re prone to suing your neighbors, then congrats! You’re now a member of the “my bee neighbors just won’t stay out of my garden and gosh, I’m mad about it” club and a recent TikTok shows that you’re not alone. 

A TikToker posting under the handle  @Agirlandherstories shared how being a beekeeper comes with occupational hazards outside of the occasional sting from your employees (aside: would bees be considered employees or tools in this context? Discuss.). Her elderly neighbor, a Mrs. Smith, had complained of bees wandering into her yard and “stealing” her pollen, to which the TikToker replied, “There’s literally no way for me to sit them down and tell them, ‘Hey little guys, you can’t go into that one specific yard. Like, they’re bees.’” If there’s anything TikTok has taught me about bees in recent years, it’s that they’re capable of winding up in places they really ought not to be.

Mrs. Smith, however, was not satisfied with that response and took manners into the hands of the law. According to the TikToker, she was then served a court summons on the grounds Mrs. Smith was entitled to some of her profits as the bees were using “stolen” pollen from her garden. The TikToker then claims the case became a local spectacle and her legal team had to bring in “local experts” to convince the judge that she was not able to train bees to stick only to certain flowers when it was time to pollinate. She then says the judge ultimately ruled in her favor and the bees were free to do their bees-ness (please laugh) wherever they pleased. 

If you’ve read this far and are wondering how this case even made it to court in the first place, you might be on the right track. The account that posted the TikTok has also posted videos of the same woman in various scenarios, ranging from bad first dates to getting uninvited from a friend’s wedding due to a cancer diagnosis. Based on the account’s bio and how unlikely it is for one person to experience all of these situations, it’s likely these are just skits inspired by stories posted elsewhere on the internet. In fact, a similar story was posted on Reddit several years ago when a user asked r/legaladvice if they could sue their beekeeper neighbor for “stealing” their pollen.

I was unable to confirm the outcome of said Reddit post but regardless of its legitimacy, bees are more beneficial than they are nuisances. According to a 2020 study, not only does bee pollination contribute directly to food security and biodiversity, bees also pollinate over 90% of the world’s top 107 crops. We can’t control where the bees go when they want to pollinate but moreover, why would we want to? 

With bee populations dwindling, we should probably be happy when our gardens are visited by our fuzzy friends. When we find bees in places we would rather them not be, let’s make like another TikToker and remove them with kindness — though I do hope you never encounter quite so many bees indoors.