More than hundred thousand bees removed from hospital after honey spotted running down walls

Bees from the hospital 

Specialists had to be called in to remove more than 110,000 bees from a hospital after residents noticed wax and honey dripping down the walls.

The insects were discovered at Rookwood Hospital in Cardiff, and beekeepers removed hives on two separate occasions.

The most recent is being worked on this week, reports Wales Online.

It began on August 1 when teams from the Lancashire-based Tree Bee Society made the trip to remove a large hive of around 60-70,000 bees from the roof of the elderly care assessment unit.

Abigail Reade, from the not-for-profit company, said a normal colony consists of around 50,000 bees, but this one had got so large because it had been there for around five years.

She said: “Beehives are limited in their space, but as the roof is so big, there wasn’t really a limit this time, which is why it has grown.

“If it was left even longer, it could have become astronomical.”

The team arrived in Cardiff and found tarps in place to catch the honey at the hospital in Llandaff , as well as towels to catch where it was running down the walls.

They then worked through the week to remove the bees and relocated them to empty bee hives.

Ms Reade said it was lucky the bees had been noticed, and it was only because of the warm weather that it had been, and had melted the wax, which dripped down.

The group, set up in 2014, removed the hive by cutting a hole in the roof to take it out before fixing it onto a frame and collecting the insects in a box.

While removing that hive, the group was then approached by a patient who said she thought there was another hive over the other side of the hospital, in the unit testing patients’ ability to drive.

Abigail said: “When she told us, we thought to ourselves ‘no, there can’t be another one of these hives over there - it’s impossible for two to have been in the same building so close to one another’.

“But we went over to have a look and it was a carbon copy of what we had just removed.”

The group, who often help with bees in people’s homes, arrived back in Cardiff on Tuesday to remove the hive, which is estimated to have a population of around 50,000 bees.

Abigail said it was difficult to say why two hives had popped up so close to one another, but said: “It’s nature - it’s unpredictable.

"They could just as easily have moved into someone’s house.”

After they have removed it, the Tree Bee Society will take the hive back to Lancashire where they will use it to make candles, furniture polish and other wax-made items.