Bees move into Queens apartment, outnumber tenant

QUEENS, N.Y. (WABC) -- She thought she saw a few bees flying around.

But Frieda Turkmenilli had no idea that 50,000 of them were calling the ceiling of her Elmhurst apartment, home.

"How did they get there? Where did they come from?" she said Thursday. "I was shocked."

She had noticed some bees around the Queens apartment over the past few weeks, but it was other neighbors who complained to building manager Mike Candan.

"It's pretty amazing to think they found this one little hole, and they went in and set up shop, and started making honey," he said.

To solve the problem, Candan called in Anthony Planakis and Larry Stone.

The two professional beekeepers have been handling jobs like these - and getting stung - for longer than they'd like to admit. "It's quite painful!" Stone said. "You never get used it."

Beekeepers like Planakis use high-tech devices like a thermal imaging camera to locate heat increases and determine where the bees might be hiding.

But the two experts were pretty surprised at what they found. Thousands of bees had settled in.

"They're gonna go out and find a suitable home, and come back to the swarm and relay the message," said Planakis. "And they're gonna go to that location."

The bees were removed in the end, however, along with more than a dozen honeycombs. They will be relocated to a happier life at a farm upstate.

And Turkmenilli? Well, she said she kind of misses the little guys. "Yeah! I would love to have had them and had honey, you know?"