Vacuum containing hundreds of hornets stolen from Philadelphia beekeeper's truck

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The person who stole a shop vac from a truck in Philadelphia's Frankford neighborhood could be in for quite the surprise.

Don Shump, who owns the truck and vacuum, said there are hundreds of hornets inside of it.

"Whoever it was that grabbed this grabbed a shop vac that was filled with several hundred hornets," Shump said. "And not just the workers, they had a preponderance of queens," Shump said.

Shump is the owner of Philadelphia Bee Co., a beekeeping operation based in the city.

"We do removals of anything that flies and stings," he said.

His company relocates honeybees and bumblebees, and will often use them to make honey to sell in the Philadelphia area.

For hornets and wasps, Shump said they typically freeze and study them.

Last Thursday, the beekeeper siphoned hundreds of hornets into a shop vac while on a job in Malvern.

Shump put the shop vac in the bed of his pickup truck and made the drive home to Frankford. He was planning to freeze the insects the following morning.

"The truck I was driving was new, so I hadn't gotten a chance to put a wrap on it yet, so there was no clear signage as to what might be in the vehicle," Shump said.

Sometime between 9 p.m. Thursday and 7 a.m. Friday, Shump said someone stole the vacuum out of the bed of the truck.

Shump said the hornets inside the vacuum are large and can be aggressive. He also said the nest inside the stolen shop vac could produce hundreds more this fall.

In a post on Facebook, he warned the thief about what they stole:

"To the poor soul who lifted the shop vac out of the back of my truck, I wanted to give you a heads up... The vacuum was there because it was filled with European hornet queens, the largest social stinging insects in the eastern United States. I performed the removal of their nest late yesterday afternoon. Those girls should be full of life and extra spicy. I anxiously await your unboxing video."

"I've joked for years that I don't need to lock my vehicle, and generally the bees and wasps afford a safety net," he said. "Of all the vacuums, in all the trucks that they could have grabbed, I think they grabbed the wrong one."