Rorie Woods arrived with a trailer full of beehives.
It was October 2022 in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and Hampden County sheriff’s deputies were about to evict an elderly man nearing 80 years old who was undergoing cancer treatment. Woods, a beekeeper and housing activist, did not live there: she was the man’s friend and decided to intervene in her own way. She opened the beehives.
Thousands of bees swarmed the scene. Several deputies ended up getting stung, one of them hospitalized after being stung on the face and head. When they warned her that some officers were allergic, she replied without hesitation: “Oh, are they allergic? Good.”
That was not the end of the story. Before the trial, Woods fled and spent nearly three months hiding in a motel in Tennessee resisting extradition. In April 2026, a jury in Springfield acquitted her of seven serious charges, but convicted her of several misdemeanor assault charges. The sentence: six months in jail.