By Derek Schlennstedt
How many bees is an acceptable number to have living on your car?
For me, a number doesn’t immediately spring to mind, as I’ve never had to ponder that question before.
Two bees? Sure. There’s nothing scary about two bees. Five? That doesn’t sound so bad either, but 20 or 30 bees? That’s the point where you start becoming a little anxious.
I know for a fact 4500 bees is definitely too many – that is something I can say with full unambiguous confidence. If someone told me that 4500 bees had set up shop on my car, I would head out immediately, and while bees might be absolutely vital to the continuation of our global ecosystem, nobody wants thousands of stingy bois swarming directly outside your car.
That is exactly what happened on 24 September when a nurse at Healesville Hospital returned to her parked car to find, yes, around 4500 bees on her car.
Ben Moore from Ben’s Bees foiled the bees grand theft auto attempt and told the Mail that this type of occurrence was particularly rare.
“They made their home inside that car,” he said.
“They go searching for a new home with the queen and because of the slight cool inclement weather for whatever reason – probably as it was warm – they made their way into the front grill part of the car.”
“There would have been approximately 4,500 bees.”
Ben eventually managed to clear the bees from her car, and everyone remained unharmed. Except, of course, for beekeeper Ben, who was stung twice for his troubles.
“It was a bit time consuming as they were really up inside the car.”
“I had to use the smoke, as smoke calms them and makes them move and that managed to flush out a whole bunch from inside the grille.”
“I got stung twice, which is all part of it.. at this point I’m completely immune to it,” he joked.
