THIS is the sight of a Worcester living room besieged by hundreds of bees after they poured out from under the fireplace.

Corin Howard, aged 31, was forced to flee upstairs with her family after the bees filled their living room in Drake Avenue, Dines Green, yesterday.

The swarm was so great a pest control officer had to leave the house to get reinforcements before returning with a colleague.

Miss Howard, of Barbourne, was visiting her grandmother Gladys Wilcox, aged 84, when the bees appeared at 2pm.

She said: "I was with Gladys in the living room just reading the newspaper when we saw a couple of bees come from under the fireplace.

"Before we knew it they were pouring out of it. We were gobsmacked. My grandma has been living here 55 years and we've never seen anything like it.

"We were with my four-year-old daughter Olivia and my mum Madeline, and we all shut the living room door and fled upstairs. We put a towel under the door to stop them coming through. It's horrible - we keep on going downstairs to go the kitchen and when we do all we hear is this terrible humming noise.

"Our four year-old daughter thinks it is great but we don't. It's unbelievable - you can't count them, but I reckon it's at least 200 bees."

Worcester City Council's contractor Premier Pest Control was called to the house.

The firm said it would spend the evening using a device to suffocate the bees because there was so many, rather than follow normal practice in using a beekeeper to take them away safely.

Dan Walker, from Premier Pest Control, based in Pershore, said: "The bees landed on the chimney, as they often do, but this time it was a swarm of hundreds rather than just one or two.

"We would normally call a beekeeper to take them away, but there are so many we will spend the evening killing them by using a smokegen device. There is nothing else we can do."