Honeybees have infested North Penn High School in Lansdale, reports Henry Savage for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
On Monday, just two days before the school year was scheduled to begin, faculty discovered an estimated 10,000 bees in two of the classrooms. One of the staff members was also a beekeeper and removed some of the bees.
Class resumed at North Penn on schedule Wednesday without any incident, but three classrooms had to relocate as some of the bees returned.
“Unfortunately, we had to remove exterior brick from the building to access the hive,” said Thomas Schneider, North Penn’s facilities and operations director. “We’re anticipating 40,000 to 60,000 bees in that cavity.”
North Penn staff believe the bees entered the cavity wall through a weep hole. Weep holes are tiny openings in the wall meant to let excess water escape.
Schneider scheduled Liberty Bell Bee Keeping to remove the bees on Friday while the students break for Labor Day weekend.
”It’s a new one for me,” he said. “We always get one or two bees or wasps in a classroom at a time, but this is unprecedented.”
Read more about the bees at North Penn High School at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
