LONDON:  In an incredible ordeal, a 65-year-old grandmother, named Carol Howarth, was followed by a huge swarm of bees for more than 24 hours while driving her car home from a nature reserve in the UK, attempting to rescue their queen bee.

On 22nd May, shortly after Howarth had parked her car in the town centre of Haverfordwest, West Wales, before going shopping at lunchtime, an unusual incident happened. While Howarth was away from the vehicle, a huge swarm of over 20,000 bees flew down onto her vehicle, covering the back end of the car.

A team of three beekeepers, a national park ranger and members of the public helped to capture and contain the swarm inside a cardboard box while Mrs. Howarth was away from the car shopping.

Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ranger Tom Moses raised the alarm when he spotted the swarm on the car parked outside the Three Crowns pub in Haverfordwest. Concerned that the insects might be destroyed with pesticide, Moses contacted two members of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers’ Association, who came to help capture the swarm.

“As I drove past I noticed this big brown splodge on the back of a car. I had seen swarms before settling on things like this but never one as large as this. It was quite a thing to see – certainly a ‘wow’ moment,” Telegraph quoted Moses as saying.

However, after returning to her car, Mrs. Howarth drove home believing the problem had been resolved, only to discover on Monday morning that the swarm had followed her and were again covering the car. Speaking about the incident, Howarth told the Telegraph that she had “never seen anything like it.”

She was then forced to contact the beekeepers, who finally managed to remove the swarm for good by 6pm.

“One theory was that the queen was trapped in my car and the swarm was following,” Howarth said. “But they couldn’t find the queen anywhere so I’ve no idea if that was right. Apparently bees can swarm at this time of the year and it is a very strong instinct for them to follow the queen,” she added.

“I still don’t really understand why because they couldn’t see the queen anywhere. Perhaps they just like the heat of my car,” Howarth said.

Roger Burns, of Pembrokeshire Beekeepers, said, “I have been beekeeping for 30 years and I have never seen a swarm do that. 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.”