Tourists shocked as swarm of bees descend on Bournemouth

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A swarm of 20,000 honeybees looking for a new nest surprised tourists when they descended on a seafront pier. There were so many that bystanders in Bournemouth initially thought the colony was a flock of birds.

Pest control official Nic Wedge said: "They were simply trying to find a new place to nest and not capable of causing harm to the public."

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A bee keeper gingerly collects the Queen bee

A five-yard cordon was placed around the nest and the queen bee was placed into a container for the workers to follow. Later that evening the container was collected to be transferred to a private apiary.

Bee expert Koos Biesmeijer said that honeybees start to swarm and look for a new nest from late April to early June.

Mr Biesmeijer at the University of Leeds, said: "Twenty thousand bees sounds like an awful lot but it's really a normal size. A colony can have up to 50,000 bees.

"Half the colony with the old queen goes to find a new nest. The other half stays in the nest they already have and raise a new queen.

"If the food situation is very good the colony produces more wax cones and the queen lays more eggs. There's more food and it will all happen a bit faster."

Honey bees, or Apis mellifera, are found worldwide in habitats with abundant flowers. A report last year by researchers from three UK universities showed that bee diversity has declined significantly in Britain over the past 25 years.

Researchers from Leeds, Reading and York Universities found many bee species are declining or have become extinct in the UK.

Mr Biesmeijer was the lead author of the report and said the decline was "shocking" as the loss of pollinators also put the future of many plants at risk.

 

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