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“We have either had a virgin Queen or an old Queen,” beekeeper Tony Mann told the Daily Mail. “She has left the nest and she has brought the swarm and settled on the shop front.”

It’s common for honeybees to search for new nests at this time of year. An established hive can house up to 60,000 bees, but when it becomes overpopulated, it splits, and a Queen will seek out a new location.

It’s unlikely a swarm of bees would try to build their nest on a storefront, but they could have been using it as a temporary resting place. Bees usually like to build hives in dark places, such as the space between the wall of a house or an eaves trough.

Yesterday, a 21-year-old student in Southsea, U.K., was also shocked to find a swarm of 20,000 bees took up residence on his Nissan Micra when it was parked outside his home.

“Well just had a large swarm of honeybees removed from my car interesting day overall,” George Heal wrote on Twitter.

And Toronto has had its own experience with migrating bees. Last summer, about 45,000 of them descended on a construction site at Union Station downtown.

The bees landed on a piece of yellow equipment and remained there until pest control specialists removed them.

“When they swarm like that, they’re just looking for a new home,” said Paul Hayden at the time. He’s the owner of Bees and Pest Removal in Toronto and a beekeeper for four decades.

Although a swarm of bees might look threatening, “usually when they swarm they’re not aggressive,” he said.

Everton Graham of Affordable Pest Control, the team that removed the bees from the construction site, would agree. He didn’t even wear gloves during the two and a half hour removal.

“I put up a ladder, spray some water and start to take them off with my hands… handle them gently,” he said.

“Once you get the queen in the box, all the rest of the bees will go in the box.”