THERE was a buzz of excitement when beekeeper Robert Howlett turned up to remove a swarm of bees from a Cashes Green street.
Mr Howlett removed the swarm of activity from a tree in the Bassets on Thursday afternoon.
“In my 25 years of being a beekeeper I have only ever seen one other swarm the size of it. It really was quite impressive,” he said.
Before removing the bees, Mr Howlett, who runs Stonehouse-based Honey Bee Products, spent half-an-hour cutting back branches which were 15ft high around the colony.
Dressed in a protective suit, he used smoke to calm them before cutting through the branch on which the swarm had formed and removing it.
The bees were then placed in a dustbin and taken to a hive in Standish.
Honeybees form a swarm when a colony becomes too big for the hive. They contain a queen bee and can have up to 20,000 workers.
He returned the next morning and checked he had collected them all.
“There was bound to be a few stragglers left since you cannot catch them all but I got the majority and they are now in a safer place, in time for winter,” he added.
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