Accusations Fly, Buzz, Sting After NYPD Bee Detective's Dramatic Exit
Just eight months ago, Anthony “Tony Bees” Planakis had nothing but kind words for the police department where he’d served, until recently, as detective and resident apiarist. Now, he’s buzzing a different tune. “I had no choice but to retire,” Tony Bees told the New York Post. “I was blackballed.”
Planakis—whose services were called upon, for instance, when an unsuspecting Queens resident found 50,000 bees living in the attic of her home last year—now claims that jealous cops schemed him out of of his position. He told the Post:
“I’m pissed off that the powers that be forced me out of there,” Planakis said of his NYPD bosses. “I had no choice but to retire. I was blackballed,” he said. “I was accused of stealing the bees, making honey and profiting. Lieutenants were jealous of the attention I got from [former Police Commissioner] Kelly,” who gave him the keys to a new bee-mobile last year.
Planakis is surely hurting, but he will not allow his good name to be sullied. On Twitter, he’s spent the last day retweeting random thoughts about “tall poppy syndrome,” defined on Wikipedia as “a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers.”
The powers that bee, in other words, are trying to drain this tall poppy of all its sweet nectar. Utterly unbeelievable.
