Thousands of bees swarm bike in Chicago

Who needs a lock when you can have nature protect your valuables?

A swarm of bees latched onto a red bicycle locked to to a city bike pole in downtown Chicago Monday afternoon. 

The spectacle drew a dozens of people to the corner of Madison Street and North Garland Court for a couple of hours. 

The owner of the bike, Sarah Lorraine Bradley, said the whole ordeal was a "weird lovely thing" in a post on Twitter. 

She enlisted the help of local beekeeper Jana Kinsman, who arrived on the scene to scoop up the bees and take them to a local workshop. 

As for a reason for the bees bizarre behavior, invertebrates specialist Allen Lawrance said that this swarming phenomenon is caused by a beehive becoming too crowded.

If this occurs, the queen bee and a large number of aging worker bees will permanently leave their hive to find a new place to create a hive. 

Bees usually settle on a temporary spot before deciding on where to make a permanent home. In this case, that spot was Bradley's bike. 

Lawrance says the bees were most likely docile instead of dangerous since they are less likely to sting when they do not have a hive to protect. 

If a beekeeper had not arrived on the scene, he says the bees could have spent anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days on the bike.