40,000 Bees Evicted From Home In NYC — Queen And Colony Moved Upstate To Make Honey

A hive of 40,000 bees can make quite a racket, a Queens resident has learned. He had to call in a man they call “Tony Bees” to shun the insects from his home – and the process took two hours.

The NYPD detective with the appropriate nickname, Anthony Planakis, is now retired, but he went to the home Monday night to find and remove the hive, according to the New York Daily News.

Using an infrared camera, he found the colony beneath a second-floor bedroom overhang by the back deck. An estimated 40,000-strong swarm had taken up shop underneath the bedroom floor, building honeycombs and making honey.

The detective and his partners removed pieces of the honeycomb from the underneath siding and plywood, honey dripping from its destroyed shards. But don’t worry, the queen was found so everyone can be relocated to an upstate apiary.

One would think finding a population of 40,000 insects in your house is an unusual occurrence, but the retired detective extracted another massive hive in another Queens residence last summer, the Daily News reported at the time.

That infestation – underneath a terrace on the fourth-floor of a condo – was so bad, the resident’s upstairs neighbors killed 100 bees a day and had been stung several times. That colony had made 10 pounds of honey when they were finally kicked out; it took the crew six hours.

And already this year, at least two more invasions have plagued homeowners outside New York City. In Albany, a swarm estimated at 80,000 strong moved into the walls of Bobby Powell‘s home, a colony that had been built up over three years, WALB reported.

And in April, a home’s soffit became an ideal place for 40,000 bees to take up residence over the course of three years in Colorado. The eviction team there spent seven hours getting rid of them, 9News added.

All this comes at a time when scientists have learned the country’s bee hives are dying off at alarming rates during the summer months, as the Inquisitr recently reported. Some have suggested the lack of vacant land – a ripe location for wildflowers to grow and bloom – have contributed to their declining hives. Stress, diet, and fungicides may also be to blame.

Perhaps scientists should start checking under bedroom floors for bee hives.

[Photo Courtesy Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]