Honey bees take over Times Square

Around 30,000 honey bees swarmed on a ledge at One Times Square, where the New Year's Eve ball drop happens, in New York on Tuesday, June 27.

Andrew Coté, a fourth generation beekeeper of AndrewsHoney.com, was called to the rescue and used a vacuum to suck up the bees.

"The bees weren't colonizing," Coté said. "The bees were on a nearby hotel and they were probably not very well managed and they left like Lucifer, the most beautiful angel left heaven, took a third of the angels with him, these bees left with their queen. They were looking for a new home as a temporary station. They landed on that old New York Times building in Times Square."

The unharmed bees were later combined with a smaller hive at nearby Bryant Park that hosts two public beehives maintained by the New York City Beekeepers Association, which Coté founded.

"We decided to put these bees in Bryant Park because one, they needed a place to go right away," Coté said. "There were so many of them in a small container that they would have overheated were we to have left them there for too long. Two, we have two hives at Bryant Park. One of them was lagging behind the other. This is going to give it a jump-start, it's going to double the population in a few minutes."

Coté said a common misconception with honey bees is that they sting like wasps or hornets, but that they're actually docile and gentle and "a huge part of our lives."