About 15,000 honeybees swarmed a K-Mart parking lot in Pennsylvania — a strange, but not uncommon occurrence for the creatures, said one expert.

The bees swarmed in a one-metre-diametre circle on the ground outside the front entrance of the store in North Versailles, about 30 minutes east of Pittsburgh.

No one was stung, but about 500 of the bees were squished by cars driving through the parking lot.

It is unclear how the bees got there, but reports indicate some witnesses saw a truck driving nearby that was covered in bees.

“It’s certainly not an everyday occurrence,” beekeeper Stephen Repasky told the Star, adding he gets about 15 calls a year to deal with swarms.

“I’ve had them (honeybee swarms) in trees, had them on walls, on the eaves of houses, but never shaped like a pancake on the pavement of a parking lot at a K-Mart.”

Customers alerted K-Mart employees to the group of bees on the ground after swatting some of them away, said store manager Craig Judy. The incident happened May 28 around noon, he said.

It is not the first time bees have swarmed at a K-Mart.

In 2008, a beekeeper was called in to deal with a group of bees that had made a home inside a shopping cart in the parking lot of a New York K-Mart.

In 2003, a thief unleashed 100 bees inside a K-Mart bathroom as a diversion to steal $60 worth of merchandise.

Repasky works for the Pennsylvania Games Commission and has several bee hives of his own. He was called in by K-Mart and a local pest control company to redistribute the bees without harming them.

Honeybees are docile by nature, especially while swarming, and Repasky was able to scoop some of them up while examining the situation, he said.

“They’re not the killer bees that people hear about in the movies.”

The honeybees were just looking for a new home. They are attracted to dark spots in bright areas, so Repasky lured them inside cardboard boxes, and also used smoke and brushes to help them move.

“Within seconds they focused on (the boxes) and it was like the Pied Piper and they all started marching into that hole,” he said.

Repasky collected the creatures while wearing just jeans and a T-shirt, but put on a beekeepers jacket with a veil and long sleeves for protection when he started smoking the bugs.

For any honeybee swarms, he recommends contacting a local beekeeper association rather than killing the bees, which are suffering serious declines around the world, he said.

“We’ve been losing 35 per cent of our honeybee populations every year due to various diseases and parasites (in U.S.),” he said.

“One-third of the food that we eat can be directly attributed to the pollination of honeybees.”

So, where are the bees he saved now?

“In my backyard,” said Repasky. “I have several sites … where I have honeybee colonies. I’ll hopefully get honey later this fall or next spring.”