THE Buildbase Bees are virtually certain of avoiding the Elite League's relegation race-off after a hard-earned 52-43 win over Swindon at Brandon.

Bees went into the meeting without both Simon Stead, who had failed a fitness test on his broken collarbone, and Billy Janniro due to his USA return.

But the rest of the side dug in and overturned an early deficit to hit the Robins with a devastating mid-meeting burst.

Swindon were left to bemoan a couple of refereeing decisions for incidents on the first bend - but the Robins also gained points through two breakdowns for Ben Barker, the second of which turned a Bees 5-1 into a Robins' 5-3 as Troy Batchelor was riding for double points.

The Hans Andersen/Olly Allen combination continues to impress and the duo carded 5-1s in both Heats 6 and 10 as Bees took control, scoring 19 points out of a possible 20 across those five races - and Swindon lost reserve Sebastian Alden with a broken collarbone when he crashed out of Heat 8.

The visitors rallied with an 8-1 in Heat 11 as skipper Leigh Adams won his tactical ride, and their 5-3 in Heat 12 brought them to within seven points.

But Bees hit back with Andersen dominating Heat 13 and Filip Sitera overhauling Mads Korneliussen for an important third place.

That made the points all-but safe with Bees happy to share the last two heats at the end of a good team effort headed up by skipper Chris Harris with a 16-point haul.

The win moves Bees up to sixth place in the table, and the only way in which they can now drop into the bottom two is if Peterborough win their last match (at home to Wolves) and Bees lose their last two (at Ipswich and Belle Vue) with a points swing of over 98 in Peterborough's favour across those three meetings.

Bees boss Peter Oakes said: "Before the meeting we thought it would be a difficult one, especially because not having Simon left us terribly vulnerable in the position we'd put him in the team when we thought he would be back!

"But things worked well in the end, and I think we broke their spirit a little by piling in the points early on, and Swindon's heads went down, which is something their team manager admitted.

"They suffered a blow when Sebastian Alden was unable to carry on, but we know all about that this season.

"I think it shows there isn't an awful lot of difference between us and a team that's in the play-offs, and had we steered clear of injuries all season I'm fairly sure we would have been up there - but it was still a good way to finish off our home League programme."

BUILDBASE BEES 52: Chris Harris 16, Hans Andersen 12+2, Olly Allen 10+1, Shane Parker 6+2, Filip Sitera 6+1, Ben Barker 2+1, Simon Stead r/r.

SWINDON 43: Leigh Adams 15, Jurica Pavlic 7+1, Troy Batchelor 7, Sebastian Alden 6, James Wright 5+3, Joel Parsons 2+1, Mads Korneliussen 1.