More than 150,000 bees discovered living in ceilings of Inverness house

More than 150,000 bees have been rescued after they were discovered living in the bedroom ceiling of a property in Inverness.

The homeowners buzzed Loch Ness Honey Company after they noticed a swarm of bees appear.

Three different colonies were found in the house by beekeeper Andrew Card.

More than 150,000 bees have been rescued after they were discovered living in the ceiling of a property in Inverness Loch Ness Honey Company

Around 50,000 to 60,000 bees were found in each colony in the bedroom, bathroom, and living room ceilings with a queen located in two of them.

Mr Card said: “Each colony was bigger than we estimated. I would say 50,000 to 60,000 in each of the three colonies.

“We located the queen out of two of them. The third one, we didn’t manage, but I think it’s because of the season. Then she’s been slow to mate because there weren’t any eggs in there either.”

The beekeeper was tasked with recovering the bees from the house, and they have now been relocated.

The bees have been relocated by Loch Ness Honey Company Loch Ness Honey Company

“We’ve recovered all the bees and the household is now satisfied that we’ve done a good job,” Mr Card added.

“We’ve relocated the bees to one of our out apiaries. So we have an isolation apiary. So any swarms or any kind of unknown bees that we come across, we’ve put into an isolation apiary. We monitor them for about six weeks for diseases.

“We feed them up to make sure that they’re nice and healthy and then we overwinter them and that will be next year’s honey production colonies then.

“We try and do our best to look after them. Pollinators, on the whole, have taken a huge impact in the last few years.

“We’re also seeing big losses with the honey bees this year because of the type of winter that we’re suffering longer than normal.”