Leon Hines got more than he expected when he went shopping at the Cowley Retail Park, coming out of the shops to find his car covered in bees. Now he’s been criticised for killing them.What was he supposed to do, ask them nicely? It’s not like he immediately whipped out a can of Raid, either!
“I was with my wife Aimee who’s eight months pregnant and my three-year-old daughter Aaliyah so I didn’t want them to get stung.”
The 31-year-old said: “I got in the driver’s side where there were less bees and drove really slowly when I was near pedestrians.
“I went to the bypass and drove really fast to try and get rid of them, but they stuck to the car. I ended up having to go through the Tesco car wash twice to kill them.”Good old Tesco, every little helps! But seriously, who would criticise the man for his actions?
Oh, well, there’s always one, isn’t there?
Phil Sharman, the vice chairman of Oxfordshire Beekeeper’s Association, criticised Mr Hines’s solution, adding: “He will have drowned their Queen, which is the centre of their universe.
“Honey bees swarm when they’re trying to find a location to stay. Before they left their old nest they will have gorged themselves on honey so they will have been totally docile.”Clearly, not docile enough about getting off this poor sod’s car!
He urged the public that if they find a swarm to contact the association’s swarm liaison officer Maurice Leen on 01865 773626.Who’ll come out immediately, rain or shine, day or night, to remove them. Right?
4 comments:
These people are volunteers and they do come out quickly because a swarm is valuable. Bees swarm during the day anyway and one on a car would have been easy to collect.
It is less striped overlords than homeless and lost. They are docile but a swarm is a frightening thing to be near. He dealt with it himself to protect his family. You can't blame him.
Two trips through a car wash though. These were clearly the X-Men of bees. They would have killed us all if they had found a home and thrived.
A swarm of bees can appear rather frightening to anyone that hasn't seen one before but it shouldn't be the cause of switching off ones brain. Logically the first thing to do would be to call for someone that knows more about them and how to handle them and not to dash off and spread them everywhere so I have to agree with the chap from the beekeeper's association.
I well remember as a young lad helping to collect a swarm from one of our fruit trees, emptying it onto a sheet on the ground and then crawling on hands and knees through them to find the queen and move her to a new hive. Once she was there all the workers followed without problems and I never got stung.
"call for someone that knows more about them" Oh please...
"...and they do come out quickly because a swarm is valuable."
I doubt there's enough of them to get there that quickly, even if the little buggers were made of gold!
"...but it shouldn't be the cause of switching off ones brain."
I thought the car wash was quite a good idea!
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