If you see a swarm of bees in your yard, do you know who to call? Under no circumstances should you call an exterminator. Honey bees are in a desperate state of decline in recent years due to Colony Collapse Disorder. The correct answer is...you call a beekeeper. A quick internet check should reveal a swarm hotline number to call in an emergency, or at the very least, a local beekeeper association. That's exactly what I did - I called the swarm hotline.
Here is how it all started. For several days in a row, I saw what appeared to be honey bees in a wet area at the edge of my koi pond. I took a photo and emailed it to a beekeeper for positive identification. Knowing about the national honey bee crisis, I didn't want to jeopardize any bees by adding conditioning chemicals to my pond.
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| There was a steady flow of bees drinking from my pond. |
A beekeeper looked at the photo and confirmed that I had honey bees watering at my pond. It seemed they came and went from the same direction when they flew away so for a second I wondered...could I find where they came from? That seemed like a foolish idea to go off chasing some bees to find their hive so I promptly put that idea out of my head.
Several days later, I was walking through a small meadow at the edge of my back yard when I heard a loud buzzing. Like bees buzzing. It was early May so there were no flowers blooming yet in my meadow. Still, that buzzing sound persisted. Then, I saw a lot of bees flying around a seven foot pine tree that was located in my meadow, and about 30 yards from my koi pond. I looked up and holy cow! Right in front of me, at eye level, was a huge football sized ball of bees. Honey bees. Never having seen a huge ball of bees before, I was thrilled. I assumed this was a real honest-to-goodness bee swarm.
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| This is what I saw about 6 feet off the ground in a pine. |
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| With my camera I was able to get a closer look. |
My first reaction was to run inside and grab my camera to start shooting pictures. After all, who's going to believe this, right? Then, I started thinking about the outdoor graduation party I was hosting in a week. Hmmm, a yard full of people and food and a swarm of bees. That's when I searched bee swarms on the internet and called a swarm hotline. They put me in touch with a beekeeper, who rushed over promptly. (Later I found out the value of a queen bee and an entire hive.)
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| The beekeeper suits up. |
The beekeeper took one look at my big ball of bees and suited up. I explained to him I would be documenting his every move with my camera. Armed with a tree pruner and a box, he quickly got down to business.
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| Cutting the limb down to box size. |
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| A box of bees. |
Soon the beekeeper had my swarm of bees in a box into which he had cut a hole and covered with screen. Most of the bees were in the box but a few buzzed around the outside, clinging to the box, trying to get inside. Then he loaded the box into the backseat of his car, outside bees still flying loose, and he drove off. Would I get into a car with a box of bees inside a box and a few bees outside the box? Probably not.
What I learned that day from the beekeeper was that I probably had a natural hive in one of the dead trees on my property. The hive may have grown so large that a group of bees took the queen to scout out a new hive location. (The old hive would simply have to produce a new queen.) Since the new group didn't have a location picked out for the new hive, many of them surrounded the queen (in a bee ball) to protect her. Others flew about scouting locations and apparently had not yet selected an ideal location. That's why they were simply hanging out in my pine tree for a few days.
It was all very exciting. I was thrilled with the shots I had gotten. My husband commented, "You were so excited, running around and taking pictures - the way you acted about those bees - I think that's the same way some people might act if Brad Pitt came to their house."
Indeed, it was all very exciting. I miss my bees.
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