Beekeeper jailed after releasing insects on authorities trying to evict her friend

A beekeeper has been jailed for six months after she set swarms of her insects on sheriff’s deputies attempting to carry out an eviction at a friend’s house. Rebecca Woods insisted she only released her truckload of hives to allow the bees to enjoy the “lovely, flowering landscape” near the home of an elderly friend and cancer patient. But a district court in Springfield, Massachusetts , heard that Woods, 59, admitted under questioning that she was trying to save him from eviction by freeing the bees in the presence of the deputies who had shown up to serve papers. Several officers were stung on their heads and faces, and one required hospital treatment, the New York Times reported . Additionally, about a thousand of Woods’s bees died during the encounter, many of them crushed when several hives toppled as she wrestled with deputies trying to arrest her, and others because female honeybees die after delivering their sting. “This was unlike anything our team has ever experienced,” Nick Cocchi, the Hampden county sheriff, said of the incident, which was captured on video released by his office and posted to YouTube by MassLive. In the footage, several deputies are heard shouting “hey” at Woods, and one says: “She’s opening the bees!” One deputy is seen frantically waving his arms, trying to shoo the insects away. …