Ah, bees. Gotta love them, but probably best to avoid a swarm of bees in the middle of Glasgow if you are not a professional beekeeper. More so, if the said colony of bees overhauls a bar entrance, it is set to cause a significant problem to enter the establishment. Exactly that happened at the 63rd+1st bar today, where the bar was forced to close.
The trendy cocktail bar and restaurant 63rd + 1st ran into the problem over the weekend, with beekeepers supposed to be arriving today (June 28). Initially, the swarm of bees were right by the entrance gathered up on the fence, but they ended up buzzing onto a wheelie bin later on.
Initially, the staff ended up having to escape via the fire exit to avoid getting stung by the territorial insects. The bar on Bothwell Street reopened on Monday evening as the staff were able to move the wheelie bin further away from the entrance.
Duty manager Petya Petrova said: “Hundreds of them swarmed outside the entire front of the building. I have no idea what happened, they just arrived randomly and settled onto the railing in about 10 minutes.”
“We ended up having to close because it’s obviously a safety risk, with it being so close to the entrance. We put up a sign to explain we had to close because of the bee colony on the terrace. But we still saw some people going up close to them and trying to touch the bees, which probably isn’t a good idea.”
“Apparently they send scouts over to check out a new place to nest. And then they all moved over, which meant we were able to move the bin away from the entrance and reopen for dinner on Monday night.”, said the duty manager.
“The council said they don’t deal with bees. And we phoned a pest control company and they arrived and took one look at the bees and said they couldn’t help. We spoke to some beekeepers who couldn’t send anyone immediately and said we needed to wait 24 to 48 hours in case it was just a swarm that would move on and not a nest.”