Large amounts of bees swarmed the toll station on the highway. Photo: screenshot of the video posted by the Paper

 A toll booth on a highway in East China was swarmed by tens of thousands of bees that had somehow managed to escape from the truck they were loaded on.

An online video posted by The Paper shows a large box beside the toll booth completely covered in layers of bees as a firefighter at the scene uses a brush to try to get them in a box.

The fire department of Huzhou, Zhejiang Province was called to the local toll gate after frightened staff were swarmed by an estimated 30,000 bees, according to guancha.cn, a news site based in Shanghai.

Three staffers suffered stings as the bees managed to get inside a toll booth even after they tried to seal it closed. 

"My truck just passed [the toll booth] and I was planning to get gas," the truck driver transporting the bees said. "I don't know when the bees got out."

The nearby gas station was also swarmed by bees.

"We shot them down with squirt guns at the gas station and trapped them in boxes at the toll station," one of fire fighters said.

Within 90 minutes all of the bees had either been captured or killed, firefighters said.

Chinese netizens said the truck driver should pay compensation to the staffers who were stung, and explain how the swarm of bees were allowed to escape.