After frightening pedestrians around the Mäster Samuelsgatan area, the bees gathered above Stockholm’s H&M headquarters.

“It lasted for over three hours,” said Annette Rieger, who works in the building, to The Local.

“Bees were everywhere, they were all over the windows, they even got through the first level of glazing. My colleague was super scared because she is allergic to bees!”

Click here to see more of the bees, including their rescue, from inside the building

According to bee-expert Johan Jarbrant, chairman of the Stockholm bee-keepers’ association, the swarm numbered around 5,000, wrote the Aftonbladet newspaper.

Jarbrant and a colleague geared in protective clothing, used a sky lift to remove the bees and to take them to a less populated area.

“They used smoke to get rid of the bees, the smoke made them dizzy, then they were put into cardboard boxes,” Rieger told The Local.

While officials still do not know where they came from, Jarbrant claims that he thinks they were probably looking for a new place to live.

Karolina Lissiö, expert from Bee Urban, a company that keeps bees in 27 hives across central Stockholm, agrees.

“The swarming of the bees is a natural part of the reproductive cycle. When a new queen is hatched, the old queen takes some bees with her to a new hive in another place,” she told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

Salomon Rogberg

twitter.com/thelocalsweden