A resourceful Australian man who took matters into his own hands when his BBQ was besieged by bees has become an internet sensation.
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The mystery man says he had noticed a loud buzzing sound coming from under his BBQ cover, so he fashioned a "weapon of buzz destruction" by taping a cockroach bomb to the end of a garden rake.
See all the photos here
Backed by photographs documenting his DIY-extermination mission, he set the can off, shoved it under the cover and "ran like the clappers", his email says.
Returning a few minutes later, he found an incredible sight: a pile of dead bees and eight combs of honey hanging from the wooden side shelf.
"These are feral bees – European honeybees that are not native to this country but the same kind that beekeepers use," pollination expert Dr Saul Cunningham told ninemsn.
"They like to live in protected spaces, so when they escape their little white boxes they seek out something similar ... if the BBQ wasn't covered, it wouldn't have happened."
Dr Cunningham says the BBQ hive housed over 1000 bees, and it would have only gotten bigger had the resourceful homeowner not acted.
And the bees' honey, had it not been sprayed with chemicals, would have been perfectly safe to eat.
"If he was a skilled beekeeper, there was no reason he couldn't have harvested the honey himself," Dr Cunningham said.
"It's exactly the same honey as you find on the shelf."
The photos are rapidly circulating by email and have been posted on several picture sharing sites.
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