Bizarre Incident

Occurred At

Convenience Store

By BILL JONES

Staff Writer

A swarm of honey bees created chaos outside a convenience store at the intersection of the 107 Cutoff and Jones Bridge Road late Thursday afternoon.

Jeff Wilburn, chief of the Camp Creek Volunteer Fire Department, said his department was dispatched by Greene County 911 to the Appalachian Oil No. 36 market about 4:30 p.m. after 911 received a report that the bees had literally covered a man in the store's parking lot.

"The man was putting brake fluid in his car when the bees just covered him up," Chief Wilburn said. "But miraculously, he wasn't stung."

Wilburn said witnesses told him that store staffers and bystanders managed to get the bees off the man, whose name he didn't know. "He had left before I got there," Wilburn said of the man.

But there were still thousands of bees swarming around the parking lot when firefighters arrived, Wilburn said. "We tried to disburse them with water from out tanker truck, but they wouldn't go away."

Chief Wilburn said the bees swarmed over a parked car and parked pickup truck and also stung one market patron and his pet dog.

But the stung patron apparently did not require medical attention, the chief said.

Although the main swarm moved on, hundred of honey bees buzzed around the market's parking lot for about two hours, the chief said.

The market's entrance and exit from Jones Bridge Road was blocked for a time due to the bee swarm, Chief Wilburn said.

Only once dusk began to fall did the remaining bees begin to leave the area of the market, the chief said.

Chief Wilburn said he and six firefighters remained on the scene until about 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Bill Brown, director of the Greeneville-Greene County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, said he also was dispatched to the scene by Greene County 911.

He noted that a beekeeper he called to the scene told him that the bees likely had left one hive and were moving to a new location to establish a new hive.