"We had 15,000 girls who wanted to get in and have a nice, fresh Bellini on a hot, sunny day," general manager Eric Bonnetain joked Tuesday. At noon Monday, with the markets closed for Memorial Day and tourists filling Wall Street, Bonnetain was outside when he suddenly saw "thousands of bees flying around." Pedestrians stopped in wonder; some ran in fear. Soon, the female worker bees landed at Cipriani. "They could sting, but they were pretty quiet because they were following the queen bee, which was trying to get in," he said. The queen had disappeared into a crack of the closed portal. He called police, who summoned Officer Anthony Planakis, their bee handler. Wearing a white jacket and gloves, he used a vacuum to suck up the bees into a container. Even though they weren't successful in New York, they're getting a country place -- on a bee farm in Connecticut. Bee swarms have popped up in the city for years in spring, usually in search of homes after a new queen emerges and an existing hive becomes overcrowded.