The stories about the decline of bees in the news this week reminded me to tell you about a lucky escape for a swarm of bees last week. We received a call that there were wasps swarming at an office block we look after in Croydon. Our technician arrived to find they weren’t wasps but bees that had settled on a bike. We quickly called the local beekeeper who took the bees away safely before anyone got stung or, very importantly, the bees got harmed. Hopefully they are all settled in their new home. Fortunately we have a great relationship with the local beekeeping association and they came really quickly. The office block has a maintenance contract with us so all they had to do was get in touch and we were able to solve the problem and make sure the bees weren’t harmed. We’ve been called to bees swarming on a vehicle before but never a bike so this was very unusual. The swarm will have been en route to somewhere and the queen will have decided she wanted a rest and her chosen resting place was the bike. Naturally, the worker bees followed her and ended up swarming. I dread to think what might have happened it an unscrupulous pest control company or someone else who didn’t know their wasps from their bees had turned up…