Ken Rice opened the segment on CBS Pittsburgh with the kind of tone stations use when the words feel too big for a normal newscast. A local bee farm, he told viewers, was dealing with an “unimaginable loss,” after thousands of bees and their hives were reduced to ash, and the family was left asking one blunt question: why would anyone do this on purpose.
KDKA’s Barry Pintar then took over the report, and he didn’t treat it like a small-town oddity. He treated it like what it is – a hard hit to a family business, a massive loss of animal life, and a confusing act that doesn’t come with an easy motive.
Pintar explained that the farm at the center of it all is Bedillion Honey, a Pittsburgh-area operation that had been posting cheerful, spring-leaning content online not long ago. He said the farm had shared a video on social media about a week and a half earlier showing bees leaving their hives to enjoy the soon-to-be spring sunshine, which makes the contrast with what came next feel almost cruel…