It was about 7 p.m. when Officer Ryan Kochara got a call from Officer Tyler McConnell, who was on patrol along Edison Avenue.

McConnell was patrolling the neighborhood when he was stopped by a man who told him that there was a mailbox “full of bees” just down the road, he said.

“I went and looked and it was full of bees,” McConnell said. “That’s when I called Officer (Ryan) Kochara, because I knew he was an actual beekeeper.”

Kochara said that, in his 6-year tenure as a police officer, it was the first time he’d ever been called about a swarm of bees while on duty. He gave the resident information on bee swarms and said he would return after his shift was over.

Logan Township Police Officer Ryan Kochara inspects a swarm of bees in a newspaper box off of Edison Avenue. Courtesy photo

“I went back probably around 1 a.m.,” Kochara said. “Ironically, it was an Altoona Mirror paper box. I was able to shimmy it out of the ground there, and I had brought a nucleus box so I just walked them over and dumped them inside.”

A nucleus box contains five frames inside that bees can build hives around and lay eggs, Kochara said, adding that a traditional beehive has 10 frames.

He then took the new colony home and added them to his own bee yard, adding that this is now his fifth hive.

Kochara said that he first became interested in beekeeping through a teacher in high school, but couldn’t afford to pursue the hobby as he was going into college. It was after college, when he was “working with a kid at Tractor Supply” who was “big into it” with his uncle, that he was finally able to get started, he said.

“(His uncle) and his brother offered to show me how it was done,” Kochara said. “I ended up buying a nuc colony off of them. That started my journey and that was probably going on 10 years ago.”

Logan Township Police Officer Ryan Kochara transferred the bee swarm to a nucleus box. Courtesy photo

Now, what does Kochara do with the honey his multiple hives produce? He sells it via his front porch, he said. Honey is typically harvested in the fall and, according to Pennsylvania regulations, it is allowed to be sold from a home without a permit.

“One year I got 80 pounds (of honey) from three hives,” Kochara said. “I’ve read that it takes a bee a million miles to gather one pound of honey.”

While this was the first incident of Kochara being called out to a bee swarm while on duty, he said “off duty, I get asked all the time.”

Kochara explained that, in the springtime, bees will start to swarm and typically form balls to protect their queen. These balls can range in size from a softball to a basketball and people “aren’t sure what to do with them,” he said.

Swarming occurs when bees have outgrown their hive and have to “split,” Kochara said. Half of the bees and the old queen will stay at the hive, and half of the bees and the virgin queen will leave and “land on a branch or, in this case, a mailbox.”

“There was probably a wild hive within 50 feet and they probably thought that mailbox looked like a nice resting spot,” Kochara said.

Once they land, Kochara said the swarm can stick around for about two hours to three days but that they usually won’t sting people, as that would kill them. During this time, scout bees are out looking for a new home. When one is found, the scouts return and signal to the others to follow and the swarm dissipates.

“If you see a swarm of bees, call a beekeeper,” Kochara said. “Or leave them alone because they’ll find a new home. They won’t hurt anybody.”

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.