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Here's why 20,000 bees swarmed a Manhattan skyscraper

Bees tend to swarm as temperatures rise.
Bees tend to swarm as temperatures rise. Bees tend to swarm as temperatures rise.

Not for the first time this month a swarm of bees provoked bewilderment from passers-by as they took over a New York street.

The swarm chose to make its home outside the offices of Vox Media, leading to a series of funny tweets from the company’s journalists.

After surviving a cool winter and temperatures begin to rise, bee colonies begin to expand, often up to a size of 50,000 as more workers are produced. New York reached highs of 34C on Tuesday.But with so many bees, some of them stop receiving the queen’s pheromones – which encourage the workers to tend to her and the brood, and also inhibit the production of new queens. As they stop receiving the pheromones, the workers produce a new queen, causing the old queen to leave the nest and take around a third of the colony with her.

Verge Science, which forms part of Vox, was on hand to document the whole thing.

Verge ScienceWatch 20,000 bees swarm our Manhattan skyscraper.

Queen bees aren’t the strongest flyers, so on the way to establishing a new home the swarm stops for a rest – hence what we witnessed in New York.

The situation outside Vox Media ended happily for most, with the honeybees being loaded into boxes by beekeepers and taken to existing hives.

Those which got left behind will get lost and die without their colony.