20,000 Bees Swarm Saanich Street

SAANICH - 20,000 bees, clinging to each other. It's called clustering, and it's got to be the strangest sight anyone's ever seen on Winton Street.

It all started Monday morning when they landed on Elaine Gibb's car. "Then I had to figure out what to do, who do you call? I called the non-emergency police line and they got on the phone with the bee network."

And beekeeper David Bird wasn't far behind, excited to add a few thousand new honey bees to his hive. He arrived with a plan to climb a ladder, and shake the bees into a 'nuke box.'

In front of a captive audience, Bird successfully captured thousands of bees, but he needed to make sure he captured their queen, or else they would leave the box and fly back into the tree.

After two trips up the ladder, the amateur beekeeper escaped relatively unscathed thanks to his know how and protective clothing. "I did receive two stings, when you get stung the stinger stays and it kills her. What you see is the venom sack that's attached to the stringer, when you get stung you want to scrape that off."

Then bird and the bees, hey that sounds familiar, will buzz over to his place - their new home. "I'll feed them, and and set them up in a new hive."

They will compensate Dave Bird for his troubles with honey, and Elaine Gibb has her car back.

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News & Politics

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• /A\ News Vancouver Island
• Saanich
• Bees
• Swarm
• Capture
• Beekeeper
• Clustering
• Honey
• Andrew Johnson