Oxford Village ? Park Street was abuzz Sunday as a swarm of bees invaded the tranquil neighborhood looking for a place to build their new hive.
It seems a honey bee hive located in Chris and Janine Bishop’s backyard at 41 Park Street became overcrowded and gave birth to a second queen.
This new queen and about half the hive left the Bishops? yard to form a new colony elsewhere.
The swarm containing between 7 and 8 pounds of honeybees, or approximately 15,000 individual bees, ended up in a tree across the street from the Bishops, surrounding a limb overhanging the road.
Bishop called his friend Todd Guerin, a beekeeper who lives in Goodrich, to safely remove the swarm.
Perched atop a ladder on the bed of a pickup truck parked in the middle of the street, a fully-covered Guerin carefully placed the swarm into a new hive.
Guerin, who inherited his grandfather’s hives and has kept bees as a hobby for about 3 or 4 years, said in about a month, the new colony will start producing enough excess honey to extract for human consumption.
Considering 3 pounds of honey bees can cost about $90, Guerin netted himself one sweet deal.