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They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. But when the going is further complicated by the
 presence of 15,000 swarming, buzzing, stinger-toting honeybees, the tough get Walter Blohm.

That was the case last week, when cops were called to a Brooklyn building that looked like the set of one of
 those bee B-movies. This joint was covered in honeybees, looking like an undulating, pulsating,
 yellow-and-black-striped shag carpet.

Cops did what they do in these situations: they closed off the street, told passers-by, "Nothin' to see here,"
 and called Blohm. A half-hour later, a pickup truck with the vanity plate "NYCHONEY" arrived. Blohm hopped out
 and without flinching (bees don't like flinching, you know), put on his protective gear and dove into the
 swarm.

"You have to find the queen," he said. "Once you get the queen, all the others follow." In 45 minutes, the
 entire crisis was over (who said bees were so intelligent?). The number of bees convinced Blohm that this was
 a new hive.

"Basically, when a colony gets too crowded, the queen says, 'We're moving' and takes half the workers with
 her," he said, confirming my long-held belief that it's good to be the queen. "They need room for their
 honey."

They'll have plenty of room now; Blohm took all 15,000 to the Queens County Farm Museum, where he's been a
 board member for 20 years. They'll remain on site -- joining 200,000 existing workers and drones -- producing
 honey to be sold in the museum's souvenir shop (anything to recoup those city budget cuts, I guess).

Blohm's heroics last week raised several vital questions. One was, why hadn't I heard of the Queens County Farm
 Museum? And, more important, what's it like to be the go-to guy for all city bee emergencies?

"I'm just happy that the NYPD is smart enough to call me," Blohm said, recalling a bitter experience from 1994
 when New York State Police refused his services after a bee-filled truck overturned on a Westchester highway.
 Instead, the troopers sprayed the entire area with a pesticide -- and the bees dropped like flies, all 15
 million of 'em.

"We could've saved them all," said Blohm, who's actually an exterminator by day.

Naturally, Blohm dismissed the notion that a man who dives into a swarm of bees at great risk to himself (not
 to mention his fingertips, which have been bitten two dozen times) is a bona-fide hero. So it fell to farm
 museum director Amy Fischetti to anoint him.

"Anyone who works with angry bees is a hero to me," she said. Fischetti then pointed to the wooded area behind
 the museum's barn where Blohm keeps his eight working hives. "I can't even go out there."

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