Bees' Knees!

the heart-shaped swarm

Sometimes life on Hornby is a series of crazy events punctuated by sublime ones. Yesterday was one of the latter. At about 6pm we got a call from Al, one of the guys on the fire department who also works with Doug, casually asking us if we'd ever seen a swarm of bees. If we hadn't, he said, and if we wanted to, he added, we could come down to his place right now... because one of his hives had - as it were - flown the coop.

Al with precision removal instruments

Not ones to miss witnessing a natural phenomenon, we chowed down the last bits of broccoli, I threw the camera over my shoulder, and off we went. Al only lives two streets over. When we got there we saw nothing. We wandered down near the hives and couldn't really see anybody buzzing around. Then Al showed up. "Do you see it? It's almost directly above you..." And there it was: an almost perfectly heart-shaped cluster of, by Al's estimate, 12,000 bees on the end of a cedar bough. Apparently bees get very "docile" when they swarm, contrary to everything I've ever heard my whole life. But there they were - a softly humming huddled hive.

Al and Mike repatriating the bees

As previously mentioned, Al is a fire fighter. So when he described his cavalier plan to collect the swarm, tell them what's-what and put them in a new hive, it didn't come as much of a surprise. But actually watching him carry out that plan was quite something. He donned a bee suit - no gloves - got a box, a short handled brush and a ladder. Up the ladder he went with brush in hand and brushed the bees off the branch into the box. Not a sting was had. As if that wasn't enough, he went up a second time and got the stragglers. Then he took the boxed bees over to a new hive and unceremoniously dumped them into their new home. Within minutes the rest of the loner bees were finding their way into that hive. Amazzzzzing.

bees inspecting their new home

A great add-on to this whole story is that June Cannon, (Al's mom the fiddle player) took her electric tuning fork out to the hive not long before the swarming incident. She had noticed the musical hum and decided to see where on the scale it sat. Well, B natural, of course. No kidding.

Click here to see a honey bee leaving its stinger behind - not in Al.

Have a listen to this cool podcast on the intelligence of bees.