“About 8 years ago on October, Friday the 13th, I had a minor rotator cuff repair. Surgery took about an hour, was home the same day. Three days later, I had a bad cough and a 105° fever. At 1 a.m., I wrote my sleeping wife a note asking her to take my son to school the next day, as I was driving myself to the ER, an hour away. I hallucinated the whole way and don’t remember much of it. About a month later, I woke up from a coma.”
Mike Arterburn, who goes by Killer Bee Tactical on social media, nearly lost his life. He was lucky. After that month in a coma, he got a second chance at life, and what he’s done in the years since is pretty special. He now helps others using what he’s learned in his lengthy career in law enforcement, parent and now as a beekeeper, content creator, and survivor. His content is consistently about safety, though he enjoys a dive into true crime, and his millions of fans seem to agree. Yes, he also talks about his bees.
I met Arterburn when we were both 10-year-old kids in traditional school, and somehow we’ve kept up with each other along the way. When police violence began to infiltrate the news after Mike Brown’s shooting, Arterburn tried to convince me that not all cops are bad people, and though I knew for a fact that he had always been a decent person, I dug in my heels.
“You deal with that on the street when you’re policing neighborhoods, and then just interacting with the general public. You’re not trusted unless you know me.
“I was fortunate enough that, like I said, we were busy, even the areas that I worked. I had a lot of public interactions. I didn’t just ride around in my car. So a lot of people knew me. They didn’t think of me as a cop. They knew me. And it, it is really heartening when somebody is wanted for murder or they’re wanted for a very serious crime, and their mom will call me, and as long as I come and get them, they’ll turn themselves in. because they know they’re gonna get where they need to be safely.”
I still maintain complicated feelings about law enforcement in the United States, but I thought it was important to revisit my old friend to learn how he went from cop to beekeeper to social media star.
Young People, Young Decisions
When Arterburn joined the force, he was sure he didn’t want to be an officer. He was 25 and working in a hospital operating room as a scrub technician. How does a young man go from working in the medical field to a police officer?
“I don’t have a very romantic story about that,” said Arterburn. “… a buddy of mine said, ‘Hey man, I’m gonna apply to the police department. Why don’t you come with me?’ And I was like, ‘man, I don’t wanna be a cop.’ And he’s like, ‘just come with me. I can use the company.”
Arterburn agreed. At the time, Louisville was pre-merger, so the force was called simply the Louisville Police Department.
“We were just standing in line talking, and there was a lady that was handing out applications, and she handed one to him, and then she handed one to me, and I was like, I don’t want one. She said, ‘You’re here, take one.’”
A year later, he was hired and off to the academy for training.
From that day on, he worked in almost every part of law enforcement, from street cop to Crimes Against Children, SWAT, and the FBI.
Despite the challenges of his work, he does not look back on it with regret, at least for his work with children.
“A lot of cops retire, and they’re like, ‘Man, did it make a difference?’ It’s not one of the questions that I asked myself, ’cause we actually rescued kids.”
At the end of his career, he spent more time on the street, but after a setback at work, he realized his time at the force was at an end. He needed to move on.
‘Get A Hobby’
“When you’re a cop or in the military or anything like that, your identity is very closely knitted to your job. Some of the best advice I got was, ‘Man, find a hobby.’ You know, in addition to find some extra work or whatever, but find a hobby. And so, beekeeping, I thought, would be my side hustle. I thought a hive produces about 80 pounds of honey every year. And once you have one hive of bees, they make more bees.”
Currently, Arterburn has 13 hives in his apiary and is looking to expand. He’s looking to grow his hives and has spoken to the Agriculture Department at the University of Kentucky to house his bees. He hasn’t moved them there yet, but that’s the plan.
His bees are still a hobby and not a business, he maintains.
“When you’re in the bees, you’re not thinking about anything. There’s something about the frequency of the buzz that they say reduces PTSD. So it’s probably a blend of all that. It’s hot and heavy work. A box of bees weighs a hundred pounds.”
Beekeeping is not unlike his work in law enforcement in that the bees’ temperament can differ from many external factors.
“Every hive has its own personality. They might be having a bad day if it’s cloudy outside and they can’t see the sun, ’cause that’s how they tell directions. They’ll be cranky.”
Beekeeper to Killer Bee
“My son was around 10 years old at the time, and he came to me. I was doing something on the computer, and he showed me his phone and said, ‘Dad, look at this.’ And it was two little young — maybe nine or 10-year-old — girls twerking, wearing next to nothing. The dad part of me kicks in and I’m like, ‘There is no way their parents know they’re doing that.’”
His son suggested he make a video, and because of his experience with crimes against children, he knew immediately what his first topic would be. At the time, TikTok was still a relatively new phenomenon in America.
“I downloaded the app, and all I did was… I turned on a lamp and sat in a quiet room. I made a video on ‘this is how you can help lock down your kids’ social media. This is how you kind of police your kids on the internet a little bit.’ And once I put a video out like that, it got, maybe 6,000 views or something like that.”
After the response to the first video, he made another, and then it turned into another hobby.
“I started posting just about every day ’cause then somebody else would ask me a question. And I thought, ‘That’s important. That should be out there.’ It only takes me about 10 minutes to knock out a video. It kind of turned into a side hustle, and then it turned into a job.
“It’s wild. The people I’ve talked to that I would never get to talk to in my former profession.”
One of those people is another popular TikToker content creator, Justin Danger Nunley, whose famous line, “Listen, did you know,” peppers each of his videos.” Arterburn asked Nunley how he does his content creation and got a few tips.
Like Nunley, Arterburn’s topics appeal to many people across spectrums. He tends to avoid political positions or discussing politics, and keeps his content focused on helping folks protect themselves and their families. His common-sense approach makes his videos useful across platforms and for many audiences.
Thankfully for Arterburn, those original 6,000 views have turned into over four million followers across social media.
“I got a plan for this, and any content creator’s biggest challenge is trying to find something new to talk about. But since mine is like crime and safety, there’s always something to talk about, really.”
If you’re looking for information about protecting your safety and privacy, he’s got videos about that. If it’s personal protection and purchasing a weapon that you need, whether a firearm or a non-lethal weapon, he’s got videos about that.
Protecting your kids? Killer Bee Tactical has you covered.
You can find Killer Bee Tactical on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Lemon8, and TikTok.
