20K Bees Follow Woman for 2 Days

Their queen may have been trapped in her car
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 25, 2016 7:02 AM CDT
20K Bees Follow Woman for 2 Days
Don't ever complain to Carol Howarth about a bee in your car.   (Facebook)

A woman visiting a nature reserve in Wales over the weekend accidentally took home an estimated 20,000 bees. Carol Howarth, 65, stopped in Haverfordwest to do some shopping on her way home from the reserve when a swarm of bees descended on her car. "I have never seen that many bees in one spot," local park ranger Tom Moses tells the Guardian. "They were packed in quite tight and covered a couple of square feet." Fearing the bees or a person might get hurt, he called the Pembrokeshire Beekeepers' Association and watched for three hours as beekeepers gathered the bees in a cardboard box, reports the Telegraph. "It's safe to say I got stung quite a few times," Moses tells the Milford Mercury. But the bee tale wasn't over.

By the time Howarth had finished her shopping, the issue seemed resolved and she drove home. The next day, however, the swarm returned. Howarth called the beekeepers for backup and the bees were cleared away for a second, and, so far, final, time. The leading theory is that the insects were only following their queen, who may have gotten stuck in Howarth's Mitsubishi Outlander at the nature reserve. "We think the queen had been attracted to something in the car, perhaps something sweet, and had got into a gap on the boot’s wiper blade or perhaps the hinge," a beekeeper tells Metro, though a queen bee was never found. "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." (A swarm of stinging bees descended on a mosque.)

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