TRAFFIC STOPPED BY BEES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 255, 25 September 1933, Page 2

TRAFFIC STOPPED BY BEES.

CONFUSION ON A ROAD. Traffic on the Taunton Road, London, was held up for over an hour one day in August by bees, and several persons were stung. It was stated that two swarms were fighting, but Mr R. E. Quick, a Norbury bee-expert, was sceptical of this report. “Bees never fight in the air,” he told a Press representative, “or, at any rate, I have never heard of anything of the kind happening. What actually happened in this instance, I should say, was that a big swarm flying across the road were separated by a passing motor car, and their mass formation was destroyed. “Probably the queen was knocked to the ground, and if this happened the remainder, who would never desert her, would fly round and round in a circle in an attempt to locate her. To the uninitiated it might seem that a battle of bees was in progress. You can take it as definite that bees fight only on their own doorsteps, so to speak. It is an elementary rule in nature that the weakest go to the wall, and sometimes, at this time of the year, the weaker hives are attacked by bees from the strong hives. Then bees really do fight.”