Bzzzzzzz

Since moving here four years ago we’ve had our share of wildlife visiting our backyard and home, and yesterday was no exception. This time, it was thousands of bees, converging first over our backyard, and then settling down in one of our cedar trees. Within a 15-minute timespan the thousands of bees had morphed from a huge cloud-like swarm into a foot-long hive around a branch:

Once they all got settled onto the hive, the loud buzzing stopped, though there were still plenty of comings and goings by individual bees to and from the hive. We later found out these “coming-and-going” bees are known as scouts, and serve a sort of “realtor” function in the bee world in that they go out searching for a new home.

Though it was fascinating to see, the thought of having a hive of thousands of bees in our backyard wasn’t really appealing, so we met a local beekeeper selling honey at an Earth Day Fair, who offered to come remove the bees on Sunday to try to set up his own permanent hive box with them. Apparently, bees only hive like this (all surrounding the queen to protect her) as a temporary measure until they find a more suitable place to start a new colony in a hollow tree or other permanent shelter (like your attic, if there’s access). Alas, about an hour after we returned home from talking to the beekeeper we suddenly heard the buzzing again, and saw the bees hovering over the marsh and toward their new forever home. It was fun while it lasted, but we sure were happy to see them move on.