Roughly 60,000 bees living inside a 3 metre long hive have been removed from their home, under the eaves of a Utah cabin.
Bee keeper Vic Bachman says the hive, which was 3.6 metres long, 1.2 metres wide and 40 centimetres deep, is the largest he's ever seen.
"It's the biggest one I've ever seen," he said. "I've never seen one that big," he told AP.
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"We figure we got 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms) of bees out of there," said Bachman.
Not wanting to kill the bees, Bachman used a vacuum cleaner to suck the bees into a cage and transport them to an apiary hobbyist shop.
"It doesn't hurt them," Bachman said.
While cabin owner Paul Bertagnolli said that $600 to remove the bees was expensive he has saved some of the honeycomb for candles and lotions at his store.
The job took six hours. At $100 an hour, the bill came to $600.
"The bees were expensive," said Paul Bertagnolli, the cabin owner. He was satisfied with the job.
Utah calls itself the Beehive state, a symbol of industriousness. Whether this was Utah's largest beehive is unknown, but Bachman said it would rank high.
"It's the biggest one I've ever seen," he said. "I've never seen one that big."
He used smoke to pacify the bees, but Bertagnolli said honeybees are gentle creatures unlike predatory yellow jackets or hornets, which attack, rip apart and eat honeybees, he said.
"They just want to collect nectar and come back to the hive," he said. "Most people never get stung by honeybees -- it's a yellow jacket."
Bertagnolli reassembled the hive in a yard of his North Ogden home, while saving some of the honeycomb for candles and lotions at his store. He left other honeycombs for the cabin owners to chew on.
"We caught the queen and were able to keep her," Bertagnolli said. "The hive is in my backyard right now and is doing well."
