WHEN bee expert Adam Strawson was called to remove some of the insects from a house, he didn’t expect to find 40,000 of them.

The huge colony in the ceiling of the property in Milner Road, off Lewes Road, Brighton, was the biggest hive the bee rescuer has removed from a private house.

He also had to remove 55kg of honey and wax produced by the bees, which had been making their home in the space between two floors for about a year. They were discovered by the house’s owner after a student moved out.

Beekeeper Adam, 29, founder of Aecre Honey in Brighton, was called to the house last Friday to assess the colony and returned on Monday to remove them.

He said: “I assumed it was going to be a small colony, I certainly didn’t expect it to be that size.

“You could feel the heat of the colony through the ceiling. A builder was there to cut holes in the plasterboard and he cut six inches at a time. Then it just continued and continued until it was half the width of the room.

“I got stung a few times, but I’m used to that, and I wore a protective suit because you don’t know the temperament of the bees.

“Occasionally, the bees would get agitated so I left it for a few minutes until they had calmed down.

“Normally, removing a hive would take a couple of hours but this one was eight hours.”

The hive measured 1.6 metres long and 30 centimetres wide, while some parts of the honeycomb were five centimetres thick.

About 50 centimetres of the hive was being used by the queen to lay eggs.

The wax was put into a 14-litre bucket and it took both men to lift it by the end of the operation.

The bees were removed humanely with Adam using a tool called a bee vacuum, which is similar to a Hoover but lighter, to gently suck them bees into a box.

They have since been relocated to Aecre’s apiary.