For nearly two days, a driver was plagued by a huge swarm of bees that clung to the back of her car as they desperately tried to reach their queen trapped inside.
Carol Howarth was out shopping at lunchtime when she parked her car in the town centre of Haverfordwest, West Wales. Shortly after, 20,000 bees descended on her silver Mitsubishi Outlander.
Howarth was unaware at first that her car had become a huge spectacle to passers-by. One of the bystanders happened to be Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger Tom Moses. Concerned that the insects might be destroyed, he contacted the Pembrokeshire Beekeepers’ Association, who came to help capture the swarm.
“It was spectacular. I was driving through when I spotted the big brown splodge,” he told The Telegraph UK.
The beekeepers arrived and contained the swarm inside a cardboard box and by the time Howarth returned to her car, the swarm appeared to have dissipated. Howarth headed home only to find the bees had followed her and again swarmed her car. She called the beekeepers for help.
It turns out that a queen been had likely been attracted to something in Howarth’s car while she had been visiting a local nature reserve. Although the beekeepers could not locate the queen, they were eventually able to capture the bees and break up the swarm, freeing Howarth’s car in the process.
“I have been beekeeping for 30 years and I have never seen a swarm do that,” Roger Burns, of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers said. “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.”
The man who recorded the bees swarming the car said it was the “best thing to happen” in years. Although, we suspect, Howarth does not share that sentiment.
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