Mum films ‘cyclone’ with bees swarming house as she is forced to close windows

A mum has described the moment hundreds of bees – initially thought to be wasps – invaded her garden in Cornwall. Jodie Gibb, from Portreath, described them as “like a cyclone” as they flew past her home.

The mother, whose children were playing outside in a paddling pool earlier in the day, said the sound of them passing was “furious”. “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she added. “It was terrifying.”

She explained how she thought the sound was some kind of electrical surge coming from outside initially. Then the noise got “louder and angrier” as hundreds of bees flew past her home in Cornwall in surreal scenes.

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“I had to close the windows and the doors and I won’t be opening them anytime soon,” she explained on Tuesday afternoon (May 21). “I was sitting in my home office with the doors and windows open, enjoying the sunshine. I pinched to make a cup and heard what I thought was a surge coming from outside.”

She continued: “The noise started to get louder and angrier. I turned around and there was a swarm of wasps or bees at the door. I slammed the door and ran to close the windows.”

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“It literally came out of nowhere, it was like a cyclone of them whipping through the air. I watched from inside the house as they flew over them. It probably took them a few minutes to get through.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was scary. The kids had been out earlier playing in their pool so I’m relieved it didn’t happen while they were out.”

At first, she thought they were wasps, but upon closer inspection, it turns out they were bees. This is because wasps usually do not swarm in groups in the same way that bees do and they looked “grosser than a wasp”.

Swarming is the natural mode of reproduction for a bee colony in the spring. Swarming is induced as bees increase their population size and require more space.

A swarm usually consists of the queen and some of the worker bees in the swarm colony. The British Beekeepers’ Association says this: “Most swarms occur on warm, sunny days from May to the end of July, usually between 11am and 4pm.”

A true swarm of honey bees is said to be “extremely dramatic”, involving many thousands of bees in a large noisy cloud. However, they normally settle in a group within 15 minutes.

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