LIMERICK City and County Council said it was investigating how best to deal with a swarm of bees that engulfed a traffic light at a pedestrian-crossing junction in Limerick City Centre this Friday (June 20).
The bees are understood to have swarmed the pedestrian lights in an attempt to follow and protect their queen.
Some have suggested the queen and her swarm took up residency at the light after being possibly discommoded from their hive following a thunder storm overnight.
Locals were reported to have fled in fright when the swarm grew into a giant ball of bees this Friday afternoon.
The swarm is located at the junction of Catherine Street and Roche’s Street.
A passerby said that “people were enjoying their coffees and the fine weather outside the cafés on Roche’s Street and then everyone was going bananas, because inside on the lights there is a queen bee and the bees are all swarming inside it”.
“Everyone was avoiding the bees on the street – it was nuts.
“Once they are swarming around the queen, they won’t harm you, so to speak, as they’re too engrossed in the queen, but if you go up to them and start annoying them then you might be in trouble, but that would be your own fault,” the man said.
The local man said that “a beekeeper is being called, I literally saw people running away scared and screaming, it looks like something out of a movie”.
“A lot of motorists were stopping in traffic looking at it and all their windows were being wound up because the bees could, I suppose, get into your car.”
A spokesman for Limerick City and County Council said the local authority was “assessing the situation to decide what action needs to be taken”.
The spokesman added that the Council has also reported the matter to Swarms.ie – an online resource to contact a beekeeper which describes itself as “Ireland’s honeybee rescue network”.
