Residents of Winnipeg’s Sage Creek are excited about their new honey bee neighbours who have made their home on a cul-de-sac lamp post

A swarm of bees has made a home atop a lamppost in the Sage Creek neighbourhood in southeast Winnipeg.

Local residents said they noticed a swarm of bees flying into Pintail Crescent about 10 days ago and have been there ever since. The football-sized swarm of insects is something locals have never seen before.

“It happened last week, but it just popped up a few days later,” explained Bjorn Johnson, who lives on the cul-de-sac. “I was driving by one day and the whole place was just swarming with bees, they were running everywhere, it was so weird.”

No one has been stung by a bee yet, but Johnson said parents are stopping their children from playing in the street as a precaution.

“The kids were there for a party, usually 10 or 12 kids zipping around on scooters, riding bikes or playing curb hockey,” Johnson said. “It just brought everything to a screeching halt.”

Beekeeper Michael Clark said the bees’ behavior indicated they were “swarming,” meaning their numbers had exceeded the previous hive’s capacity.

“If they don’t have anywhere to live, then they need to find more space,” Clark said. “They go with the queen to find a new place that suits their needs, and the queen leaves behind a daughter to take over the colony.”

According to Clark, the swarming process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days at best, so if the bees have been in the swarm as long as they claim, they may have already started “grooming,” which makes the removal process more complicated.

“You have to take some kind of lift (a construction lift) to get up there and look inside the hive,” Clark explained. “You collect the queen bee and move the hive to a box just below it (on the lamp post), and the bees will fly down following the scent of the queen bee’s pheromones.”

City officials are aware of the situation at Sage Creek and told Global News in an email that they have contacted local beekeepers to safely remove the colony, but noted that Manitoba Hydro needs assistance because the bees are located inside a lighthouse.

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