5,000 Honeybees Swarm London Shop

Local honey is a delicious treat, but the beehive trend took a surprising turn this week when a swarm of 5,000 honeybees decided to move into a central London Topshop.

According to the BBC, nobody knows where the swarm came from originally, but many central London shops have taken to keeping their own honey-producing beehives, so it seems likely that this group split off from one of those and went out to find a new home. Unfortunately, the queen bee decided they might want to live on the windows of a Victoria Street Topshop.

"We have either had a virgin Queen or an old Queen, she has left the nest and she has brought the swarm and settled on the shopfront," said beekeeper Tony Mann, who said some of the bees were flying around "like scouts to try to find out where the next best place to go is."

Topshop is a popular store, and many shoppers were trapped inside while beekeepers attempted to wrangle the swarm.

"All of a sudden there were thousands and thousands of bees flying around. You could hardly see the sky because there were so many," one shopper told The Evening Standard.

Beekeepers were able to smoke the bees into boxes, which were then carried over to Westminster Cathedral. Beekeepers maintain hives on the church's roof, where the bees will be able to continue producing local city honey and have a much better home than on the windows of Topshop.