This has to be highly illegal

We got a call about bees in the irrigation box in the front of the condo. We got there and started working.  A woman was walking by on the sidewalk. The box was near the sidewalk. We told her to keep moving and not stop. She slowed down, we asked her to step lively because there were a lot of unhappy bees. She started yelling that this was a public sidewalk and what we were doing must be highly illegal. Of course it isn’t, and she didn’t get stung.