Beehive removed from Ramsey property where swarm attacked

The day after a hive of bees swarmed in a Ramsey neighborhood and sent a man and a woman to the hospital, the colony has been safely relocated.

“We have had professionals move the hive out of a suburban setting to a farm setting,” Ramsey Police Chief Bryan Gurney said Sunday.

According to reports, the hospitalized man had a beehive at a private residence on Martis Avenue. A Facebook advisory from the Ramsey Office of Emergency Management on Saturday said the hive had been accidentally disturbed, causing the bees to swarm in the surrounding neighborhood.

Beekeeping:Johnson: I keep bees altruistically ... and for love of food and gardening

Dying off:Why are half of N.J.'s honeybees dying each year?

Accident:Motorcyclist injured in serious crash on Route 17, police say

"The bees are aggressive and have dispersed throughout the area of Martis, Elizabeth, Rose, Refy, Armstrong and Maple," the Ramsey OEM post stated.

The beekeeper and his wife were stung multiple times and sent to The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, Gurney said. He could not provide an update on their condition, but said the wife had been stung numerous times in the face. Several police officers were also stung on the scene.

“One of our officers was treated at the hospital and released,” Gurney said. “I was stung above my left eye.”

It was unknown what angered the bees, Gurney said.

"There was a park across the street," the chief said. "My concern was whether or not the bees had to be killed or we could move them. You have to do your research. I've never dealt with a bee swarm like that."

Bees can get more aggressive if the hive doesn't have a queen or if the bees were not producing enough honey and are defensive of whatever they had, said Srini Abbaraju, a Park Ridge-based bee remover.

"If something is pestering the hives and the bees become more defensive, if the person opens the hive without realizing the problem, it's possible they could get out of control," Abbaraju said.

Frank Mortimer, a beekeeper and president of the Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association, said the hive’s behavior was unusual.

"Bees don’t aggressively go around the neighborhood. That’s just not bee behavior," Mortimer said.

Bees typically fly within a 3-mile radius and 30-foot height of the hive, Mortimer added, and stay within 20 feet when they're on the defensive.

“I don’t know if the state will investigate whether or not the bees were Africanized,” Gurney said, referring to an aggressive type of bee sometimes found in South and Central America.

According to Encyclopedia Smithsonian, Africanized honeybees react to disturbances 10 times faster than European honeybees and will chase a person a quarter of a mile when disturbed.