Residents in Israel’s south experience unusual influx of bees

Swarms of bees were spotted in several locations in southern Israel on Thursday morning, prompting authorities to warn residents and business-owners to keep doors and windows shut.

One such sighting was documented by passersby in a shopping center in the city of Netivot in the northwestern Negev.

The municipality urged the locals to stay away from the shopping area and not to engage with the bees until professional teams finish dealing with the situation, Ynet reported.

Beekeeper and apiculture educator Boaz Ben Ze’ev told the Hebrew website that the spring is largely responsible for this phenomenon.

“During the spring season, when bees grow stronger, they tend to split and establish new colonies—a natural process of reproduction and settlement. This year, following a rainy winter and abundant blooming, bee colonies became especially strong—a positive development in itself. After several relatively cold weeks, a sharp heat wave arrived, causing temperatures inside the hives to rise. This increase serves as a natural trigger for swarm splitting,” he was cited as saying.

He added that in central Israel, where there is a high density of communities and vegetation, swarms disperse more widely. By contrast, the south’s dry area with less vegetation outside populated areas has led many bees to swarm to inhabited locations at the same time, according to Ben Ze’ev.

“The right thing to do is to call a beekeeper that will come and collect them into a new hive,” he said.

Beekeeper Gal Golan from the Mordechai Golan Apiary in the western Negev said that he received reports on swarms of bees throughout his area.

“In one case, we found a hive inside a couch on a home’s balcony. … when we opened it, we discovered that nearly a quarter of it was filled with bees,” he continued.

On the previous day, Golan helped the Israel Defense Forces remove a bee hive from a military Hummer that had just come out of the Gaza Strip, he was cited as saying.