Truly Nolen’s Hamilton Takes One for the Team to Treat PetCo’s Bee Takeover

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — When Truly Nolen’s Kenny Hamilton received a call on Memorial Day that San Diego-based Petco Park’s baseball field had a swarm of bees that needed removed just hours before the first pitch, he suited up, dropped what he was doing and went to work.

Hamilton was enjoying his day off at Sea World with his family when the call came in from Petco Park that bees had taken over behind home plate and resting on the fields camera equipment. Being the closest employee to the job, he made his way over to the stadium to remove the hive.

Truly Nolen’s partnership with Pestco Park started in 2022, and Hamilton said the company’s treatment policy at Petco has always been to vacuum the bees and take them offsite.

“We don’t do any chemical treatments for them,” he said. “We’ve really fine-tuned our response time. Sea World is pretty close to Petco, and it was early enough, so the traffic wasn’t bad. I was on-site before the game even started.”

When Hamilton got in position to start vacuuming, he was surprised to see his face right in the camera’s shot behind home plate, making for somewhat of a nerve-wracking job, he said.

“The bees were really calm which was weird, so all I had to worry about was baseballs flying me,” he said. “Someone was operating the camera, and it was looking at me dead in the face. It was one of our easier removals and it just happened to be right in the way of everything, but the bees made it easy this time.”

Hamilton said although it was a holiday, Truly Nolen’s customer service policy remains the same.

“An emergency to them is still an emergency to us, so we make sure to respond quickly,” he said. “For customer service it puts them at ease, the quicker we can show up, it makes them feel calmer. We want to act fast, see what’s going on and get it before they spread.”

And his family’s support made the job memorable, Hamilton said.

“Every time I go to Sea World, I get an emergency pest control call, so either I’m not going to Sea World anymore, or they fully understand the phone might ring,” he said.