Bee March

On Wednesday, in the late afternoon, I was out enjoying my garden when I noticed at first what I thought were thousands of knats flying around my neighbor’s house two doors down. When I realized they were too big to be knats, it dawned on me that it was a whole hive of bees swarming.

I do not like stinging insects but they were far enough away that I was not freaked just fascinated. I kept going outside every so often to keep track of them as I watched them slowing swarming closer. Then they were next door with a few scouts checking out my porch. Now I was freaked!

I didn’t go outside to keep track of them anymore, just watched from the window. It was almost evening and they had alighted in the persimmon tree next door in a basketball sized clump.

Next morning I checked and found them still there. By noon, when it looked like they thought they’d found a new home, I called a beekeeper. He talked my ear off telling me that he "was on his way to relocate some queens and their hives . . . seems that when a new queen is born and challenges the present queen, usually the old queen has to leave the hive and set up another hive somewhere else and the challenger gets to keep the present hive and carry on . . . but this old queen was a tough bird and wasn’t going anywhere . . . so the new queen had to move and that’s when he was called in to move them . . ." or something like that. I began to space out when he started telling me why he couldn’t come until two in the afternoon ". . . had to help his brother clean out his deceased father’s garage . . . and his brother had complained because he thought his father had collected so much stuff, but he (the beekeeper) thought that was hilarious because his brother collects just as much stuff . . .".

Finally, we agreed to meet in the afternoon and he would collect the hive ". . . and give me a three month guarantee . . . because usually another hive will follow a few days after that one, catching the previous bees scent and want to set up shop . . .."

Long story short: the bees were gone when I came home from my errands and I was glad I had taken a picture of the hive in the morning.