{"id":163101,"date":"2025-09-23T09:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T09:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163101\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T09:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T09:21:08","slug":"thousands-of-bees-swarm-wagga-wagga-cbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163101\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of bees swarm Wagga Wagga CBD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chelsea Meryl Salmon does not mind a slight sting, and she is definitely used to sharp objects.<\/p>\n

But the Wagga Wagga tattoo artist is still shaken after glancing outside on Tuesday afternoon and spying a swarm of bees.<\/p>\n

“We just looked out the window and there were just thousands and thousands of them all across the windows [and] people running through the street,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen that many bees before, it was pretty crazy.”\"Woman<\/p>\n

Chelsea Meryl Salmon says she has never seen so many bees. (ABC Riverina: Jess Scully)<\/p>\n

The bees appeared without warning on Gurwood Street, in the city’s CBD, at about 2pm.<\/p>\n

Most nestled on a footpath advertising sign, but others flew onto the busy street.<\/p>\n

Why bees swarm<\/a><\/p>\n

Beekeepers say swarms are nothing to fear and are in fact essential for future pollination of a\u00a0third of the food we eat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wagga Wagga Amateur Beekeepers Club president Ross de Clifford said colonies often became more active<\/a> as the weather began to warm up.<\/p>\n

“Generally, what happens is they outgrow their home,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So then over two to three days, they decide to split the colony in half \u2026 the queen takes off with half and she leaves half behind.<\/p>\n

“They’ll land somewhere close by while the scout bees within the group of the colony that she has taken with her go off and search for a new home.”<\/p>\n

Bee removal a job for experts<\/p>\n

Mr de Clifford said migrating swarms were “generally pretty docile”.<\/p>\n

“They haven’t got a home that they’re protecting,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So we generally find that the swarms are very docile, but that doesn’t remove the risk of getting stung.<\/p>\n

“If you poke a sleeping bear it might wake up and it might bite you, same thing with swarms.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The bees, pictured outside a Wagga Wagga dumpling restaurant, have since moved on. (ABC News: Bruce MacKenzie)<\/p>\n

Mr de Clifford said dealing with a swarm of bees<\/a> was a job best left to experts.<\/p>\n

“We’ll chuck a suit on or even just chuck a veil [and] some gloves on and we’ll either use a cardboard box or a beehive box \u2026 and we’ll just gently scoop them off,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If we can, we will leave them \u2026 and then come back and collect them at night.”<\/p>\n

The bees in Wagga Wagga were moved on by a beekeeper after about an hour and a half.<\/p>\n

Mr de Clifford said the swarm could have come from an established hive in someone’s backyard, or from an old building or hollow log.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chelsea Meryl Salmon does not mind a slight sting, and she is definitely used to sharp objects. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,83093,81778,2603,107730,134,107727,107728,107729],"class_list":["post-163101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bee-keeper","tag-bees","tag-cbd","tag-colony","tag-entertainment","tag-swarm","tag-wagga","tag-wagga-wagga-amateur-beekeepers-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}