diff --git a/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/main/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexer.java b/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/main/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexer.java
index 06c7fe46809..08d21f59591 100644
--- a/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/main/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexer.java
+++ b/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/main/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexer.java
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@
 import java.util.Iterator;
 import java.util.LinkedHashSet;
 import java.util.Set;
+import java.util.concurrent.RejectedExecutionException;
 import okhttp3.HttpUrl;
 import okhttp3.MediaType;
 import okhttp3.Request;
@@ -77,6 +78,7 @@ enum CheckForErrors implements HttpCall.BodyConverter<Void> {
     @Override
     public Void convert(BufferedSource b) throws IOException {
       String content = b.readUtf8();
+      if (content.contains("\"status\":429")) throw new RejectedExecutionException(content);
       if (content.contains("\"errors\":true")) throw new IllegalStateException(content);
       return null;
     }
diff --git a/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/test/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexerTest.java b/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/test/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexerTest.java
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..0f8589dc970
--- /dev/null
+++ b/zipkin-storage/elasticsearch/src/test/java/zipkin2/elasticsearch/internal/HttpBulkIndexerTest.java
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+/*
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+package zipkin2.elasticsearch.internal;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.util.concurrent.RejectedExecutionException;
+import okio.Buffer;
+import okio.ByteString;
+import org.junit.Rule;
+import org.junit.Test;
+import org.junit.rules.ExpectedException;
+import zipkin2.elasticsearch.internal.HttpBulkIndexer.CheckForErrors;
+
+public class HttpBulkIndexerTest {
+  @Rule public ExpectedException expectedException = ExpectedException.none();
+
+  @Test
+  public void throwRejectedExecutionExceptionWhenOverCapacity() throws IOException {
+    Buffer response = new Buffer().write(ByteString.encodeUtf8("{\"took\":0,\"errors\":true,\"items\":[{\"index\":{\"_index\":\"dev-zipkin:span-2019.04.18\",\"_type\":\"span\",\"_id\":\"2511\",\"status\":429,\"error\":{\"type\":\"es_rejected_execution_exception\",\"reason\":\"rejected execution of org.elasticsearch.transport.TransportService$7@7ec1ea93 on EsThreadPoolExecutor[bulk, queue capacity = 200, org.elasticsearch.common.util.concurrent.EsThreadPoolExecutor@621571ba[Running, pool size = 4, active threads = 4, queued tasks = 200, completed tasks = 3838534]]\"}}}]}"));
+
+    expectedException.expect(RejectedExecutionException.class);
+    CheckForErrors.INSTANCE.convert(response);
+  }
+}