Manhattan dad blames ‘hipster’ beekeepers for son’s stings

Swarms of aggressive stingers have been attacking kids in a Manhattan park — and parents believe a nearby hive built by “hipster” beekeepers is to blame.

Little Tai Corcoran, 3, was stung more than 10 times by yellow jackets while playing in Isham Park in Inwood on Sept. 30 — as was his dog, Rocky — and had to be rushed to the emergency room.

“It was terrifying,” said Matt Corcoran, the child’s father. “He started screaming and I looked over and suddenly there were 30 bees all around him.”

The attack happened about 35 yards from where two boxes of honeybees were built earlier this year by a husband-and-wife beekeeping duo, inside a neighboring green space called Bruce’s Garden.

While the sweet bees didn’t attack young Tai, parkgoers and experts say they may have attracted the yellow jackets that did — as the carnivorous flying pests like to feast on the smaller stingers.

“I’m not anti-hipster but this is incredibly dangerous. The colony shouldn’t be so close to kids,” said Corcoran.

“He’s okay — but it could have been a different story, ” Corcoran said. “He’s going to have to carry around an epipen for the rest of his life.”

The keepers of the “hipster” hive, Natalia Okolita and Andril Hrabynskyi, insist the yellow jackets have nothing to do with their honeybees.

“The wild hives are not ours … They are unrelated to our bee boxes,” said Okolita, who is registered with the USDA to keep bees. “Our bees don’t sting people.”

“But I do feel very sorry for that kid,” she added.

She said she and her husband are diligent about maintenance, and tend to the bee boxes once a week.

“We are there every Saturday or Sunday, going through the hives and checking for Queens to make sure swarming doesn’t happen,” she said.

But Anthony “Tony Bees” Planakis, the NYPD’s former bee cop, reviewed footage of the honeybee colony and said it could be an attractive food source for hungry yellow jackets.

“It’s like setting up a caravan next to a diner,” said Planakis. “Yellow jackets decapitate honey bees at the thorax, chew them up and feed them to their young.”

He added that, in his opinion, “Once a week maintenance on a honey bee colony isn’t nearly enough.”

Another local mother, who wouldn’t give her name, told The Post her son was stung “several times” in the park after the bee boxes were installed.

A second woman, who gave the name Maria, said she was swarmed by “10-20 bees” inside of Bruce’s Garden in recent weeks

The Parks Department said it has received two complaints about bee nests in the area in the past two months, and removed one of them on Aug. 12. The agency is responsible for Bruce’s Garden, but said volunteers monitor the state of the honeybee hives.

Corcoran, who filed a complaint with the city, ultimately took matters into his own hands — against the yellow jackets.

When the city didn’t remove the yellow jacket nest after several days, he said he destroyed it by “dumping bleach” on it.

“They were incredibly aggressive,” he said. “I wanted them gone.”