Thousands of bees swarmed Capitol Hill late last week, leading officials to call a U.S. House of Representatives staffer who's also a beekeeper to come to the rescue.
Cynthia Martin, chief of staff for longtime Michigan U.S. Rep. John Conyers, is
also a veteran bee hobbyist, according to ABC News. Martin put her bee skills to use in a "trap and release" effort on the north side of the Capitol building.
Martin assisted other beekeepers in trapping the queen bee in a small cardboard box, which prompted thousands of other bees to follow her, ABC News noted.
Martin, who is also an attorney, then took the captured bees by car to her
home to join a nest she was handling, CNN reported.
"My first swarm that I actually captured," Martin said. "The only thing that is scary is when you're driving and a bee gets loose."
Rachel Perry, of Capitol Bee Care, an organization that protects honey bee colonies in Washington, D.C., told CNN that the bees had outgrown their nest and were out looking for a larger home, resulting in the swarm.
Perry, one of the beekeepers working with Martin, said she helped herd the bees into the cardboard box with the queen bee.
CNN noted that Martin's longtime interest in honey bees had convinced her boss to urge past legislation requiring that the Environmental Protection Agency study if certain insecticides were contributing to the rapid death honey bees recently.
Honey bee hives have been a source of honey and beeswax for humans and are an integral part of the
nation's beekeeping industry, according to the National Geographic website.
National Geographic wrote that the public are mostly familiar with one of three types of honey bees, which are worker bees. Those female bees search for hive's food — pollen and nectar from flowers — along with building and protecting the hive. The bees also clean and circulate air in the hive by beating their winds.
The queen regulates the activity of the hive and lays eggs to create the generation of bees and there is usually one queen bee per hive, noted National Geographic. The male bees, or drones, live in the hive during the spring and summer, but they are expelled for the winter months when the hive goes into survival mode.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.