When Carol Howarth parked her Mitsubishi in the town of Haverfordwest, Wales for some shopping, little did she know the mayhem that would ensue.
According to CNN, Carol Howarth, 68, left a nearby nature reserve with a queen bee trapped in her car. For the next two days, a swarm of approximately 20,000 bees followed her.
How loyal are bees to their queen? Turns out incredibly.
A local man, Tom Moses, who works as a Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger, was driving by when he happened upon the raid.
“It was spectacular. I was driving through when I spotted the big brown splodge,” he said. “A lot of people were really amazed by it, cars were slowing down and people were taking pictures of it.”
“The next day I realized that some of the bees had followed me home,” Howarth said. So she summoned the beekeepers, who arrived ready for rescue. “We think the queen bee had been attracted to something in the car, perhaps something sweet, and had got into a gap on the boot’s wiper blade or perhaps the hinge,” says Roger Burns of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers. “The swarm of around 20,000 had followed her and were sat around on the boot of the car.
“It is natural for them to follow the queen but it is a strange thing to see and quite surprising to have a car followed for two days. It was quite amusing.”