Last updated 17:02, Thursday, 03 July 2008

MORE than 40,000 bees swarmed on a waste encapsulation plant at Sellafield this week.

The swarm of bees at Sellafield

The entrance to the plant was closed off after a worker spotted the swarm at the Cumbrian nuclear plant.
Bosses at the plant were getting ready to call in pest control officers but help was closer at hand than they realised. Tony Calvin, manufacturing manager of the neighbouring Magnox encapsulation plant is an amateur bee keeper and rushed across to offer his services.
Tony said: "Nobody wanted to see them destroyed by the pest control people, so I went home to get my bee keeping gear and set them up a hive. Bees are really clever creatures, when they leave a hive they move off and swarm together, they then send out scout bees to find a suitable place for a new hive. When they are swarming at this time of year their bellies are full and they tend to be happy, so very unlikely to attack anybody. But they are still off putting to people and could sting if they were provoked, which meant they had to be removed.”
Tony lives around four miles from the site, and has kept bees as a hobby for the past decade. Tony, who makes his own honey from his hives, added; “I am a member of the Whitehaven Bee Keepers Association and I got into it because I remember going with my dad to but honey as a child and it always fascinated me.”