Hamilton looked like the set of a B-grade horror movie yesterday as a massive swarm of bees forced the closure of a portion of Queen Street.

As many as a million bees swarmed around a Smatt?s livery cycle parked on the side of the street around noon, forcing residents to take shelter in stores to bar themselves from the onslaught.

A dozen people were stranded in the Island Shop for 90 minutes while Police and later a beekeeper struggled to contain the bee threat.

Maria Duffy was among the sequestered in the shop. She said people ran in and closed the door out of pure common sense.

?It literally looked like it was snowing bees,? said Ms Duffy. ?There were so many of them just outside the door.?

Police arrived on the western side of Queen Street at 12.15 p.m. as the swarm attached themselves to the livery cycle.

The area was cordoned off and two Police officers directed pedestrians to cross over onto the other side of Queen Street to avoid the bees.

Police called in a private beekeeper, Dejuan Seymour who arrived to remove the bees at 1.35 p.m.

With only a face mask to protect him, Mr. Seymour splashed the bees with water to ?wet their wings so they would not fly?.

He then placed a large bucket under the bees and shook the bike until most of the swarm were sealed inside the bucket.

?The Queen bee went on the bike and the rest followed,? Mr. Seymour said. ?That?s why I shook the majority into the bucket.?

But excess bees were still clinging onto the livery cycle.

Mr. Seymour tried to remove the stubborn bees with a broom without success.

Ten minutes later the beekeeper and his assistant simply picked up the entire bee-covered bike and put it in the back of his van.

The bees and the beekeeper drove away up Queen Street.

Mr. Seymour later told he knew he had the Queen once they were inside the van because all the bees were clinging onto the sides of the bucket.

While he estimated there were between 1 and 2 million bees swarming on Queen Street yesterday, Mr. Seymour said he was not stung.

?They usually don?t sting when they swarm like that,? he said.

?They pack their bodies full of honey before they leave their old hive.?

He said they chose the livery cycle because ?the scout bees thought it was a good location to rest?.

?In another ten minutes they probably would have moved on,? he said.

Mr. Seymour added: ?A swarm that big must have come from a tree or somewhere they had lived for a long time. There were two million bees in that swarm, easy. It was a very big swarm.?

He took the bees to a private bee hive on Point Finger Road.

?We will be looking after the bees and get them to work? he said.

Many people stopped to take photographs of the incredible swarm including visitors and Hamilton workers. ?The bees were the main attraction,? said shopkeeper John Riihiuoma.