This was the unnerving moment a shop worker's new car was taken over by a swarm of bees. Kass Thomas, who had only bought the bright orange Vauxhall Mokka two days earlier, parked it up in a Cheshire town centre before going to work.
But Kass was left 'mortified' when a pest controller had already been called out by the time they next saw the car - with bees even finding their way inside. And while they can now see the funny side, Kass insists it 'wasn't funny at the time', Cheshire Live reports.
"They were in my car, my brand new, three-day-old car," said Kass. "I drove off from the showroom on the Saturday and that happened on the Monday."
Try MEN Premium for FREE by clicking here for no ads, fun puzzles and brilliant new features
Kass had parked the car behind the Swinging Witch pub, in Northwich, at around 8.45am before heading to work at a nearby charity shop. As they returned to pick something up from the Vauxhall at around 2pm, the bees had already taken over.
Kass said Carlos Hernandez, who works at local estate agent Butters John Bee, had spotted the bees at around 10.30am and called pest controller Chris Bowyer. When Kass returned and opened the car boot, they found hundreds of bees had found their way inside the new car.
Chris managed to move the bees into a temporary hive before Kass finished work. But the bees came back, Kass said, with around a hundred bees once again in the back of the car.
Chris returned, removing the final bees before moving the whole colony to his Middlewich farm, where he has 75 bee hives. "It wasn’t funny at the time, but now looking back at it it was absolutely hilarious," said Kass.
Chris, owner of Paul Jones Pest Control, suggested that the incident could have happened due to a 'feral colony' of bees in a building in Northwich which 'nobody knows about'. He said: "When a hive swarms, the queen decides that there’s not enough room there anymore and to move on to somewhere else.
"The queen takes flight and settles somewhere. Scout bees then go out from that swarm and look for another cavity to go into.
"They just go to any old resting place. I’ve done quite a few on cars, it's fairly frequent, there was one in Winnington in May, but normally they just go on branches of trees, bushes and hedges."
Chris added: "You get the majority of the bees into a temporary hive, hoping that you’ve got the queen. The bees will let me know whether the queen is in the box, because of the queen is in the box the bees will walk into the box.
"They’re currently in the same temporary hive and they’ll be transferred into a full-size hive hopefully Wednesday."
