A swarm of bees descended on a housing estate in Colchester yesterday – with one resident catching the army of insects on camera.

Rhiann Johnson, who captured the honey bee footage in the Highwoods area of the town around 1.45pm on Sunday, said she had never seen anything like it before.

"I don't have a clue where they come from, I just looked out of my window and saw them," she said.

"It was like nothing I've ever seen before. My whole street was covered in honey bees, the buzzing from them was very loud too."

Swarming is the process by which a new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees.

Morag Chase, secretary of the Colchester Beekeepers Association, said: "It may have been a wild colony from high up in a tree trunk or could have been lost from a beekeepers hive.

"But there are lots of wild colonies living in all sorts of places."

Mrs Chase added that people can contact the Colchester Beekeepers Association to report swarms by visiting www.colchesterbeekeepers.org.uk