20,000 Bees Swarmed a Car for 48 Hours After the Queen Got Stuck Inside
Lifestyle
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All hail the queen bee!
When a queen bee got trapped in the back of a 4×4, a dedicated hive of 20,000 bees swarmed the car for 48 hours straight.
Beekeeper Roger Burns shared with Metro that “the car’s owner returned and drove away with the queen unknowingly trapped in the back.”
With the help of five different beekeepers, park rangers, and some people on the street, the car’s owner was finally able to get rid of the swarm.
However, it took a few tries to get rid of them. The card box they were using to trap the queen fell off of the car, allowing the queen bee to get back inside of the trunk.
“I then left the cardboard box on the roof while we waited for the last few hundred bees to leave the boot but then a gust of wind blew it off and the queen fled back to the boot again,” Burns explained. “We were left with a swarm of queen-less bees in the box and then heard that the same car was spotted the very next day with a swarm all over the boot, still chasing it.”
The bees stayed on the car until the queen was removed. During the removal Burns was stung about “15 or 20 times.”
According to Burns, something sweet must have been in the back of the trunk to attract the queen to that location.
“I have been beekeeping for 30 years and I have never seen a swarm do that. It is natural for them to follow the queen, but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days. It was quite amusing,” Burns explained.
