(WJBF) – Former WJBF NewsChannel 6 meteorologist Micah Rumsey was greeted by a surprise when he came home from his day of teaching.

“I got home from work and I’ve gotten in to gardening, and plants, and I was walking around seeing which of my trees have budded, now that we’re warming up, and I got to the back corner of my yard, and saw some buzzing around a small tree, and took a look closer and realized that there was a very large number of bees on it. At first I underestimated how many their were. I told my wife, ‘I think there’s hundreds of bees on this tree.’ Turns out there was way more,” said Rumsey.

Upon first seeing the bees, Rumsey wasn’t sure what to do.

“My first thought was how am I going to get rid of these? Who’s going to come out? I don’t want to kill them, they’re important for the ecosystem, but pest control won’t remove them, so I do the go to thing, I post on social media,” said Rumsey.

It wasn’t long after his post that people started reaching out about the bees. The person who showed up at Micah’s house that night surprised him.

“District Commissioner, Brandon Garrett, and he keeps bees in his spare time. We have a mutual friend who connected us, he said ‘hey I can connect you with Brandon, and he can come get those bees,” said Rumsey.

Garrett has been bee keeping about 4 years, and is fascinated with the process.

“It’s an interesting study to watch what they do within their own colony. It’s one of those things where they basically do every job throughout their life, and that’s something I think is really neat, something I think that’s needed in our society, is for people to have those experiences of working their way up,” said Garrett.

Garrett showed up to Micah’s house late at night to collect the bees. Thousands of bees were living in the tree. The bees have been moved and are now safe and sound in their new home.

“They are in my apiary with my other seven hives at my house,” said Garrett.

Rumsey was not only surprised that he was able to get the bees removed so quickly, he was also surprised at how many people on social media reached out.

“I guess there’s tons of people out there in this area who are bee keepers and instead of paying for bees, it’s a lot easier to take them from someone’s yard like that, if there’s a huge colony. So if you ever need bee’s removed form your house, don’t kill them, just ask people, and someone will probably come do it for free,” said Rumsey.

Micah’s bee story had a happy ending, and he hopes his story helps others who find themselves in a similar situation.

“I mean who would have thought that the headline would read former WJBF meteorologist has 20,000 bees removed from his property by Augusta City Commissioner,” said Rumsey.