Bee swarm 4-3

The activity around the hive that caught my eye.

So after our adventure on Friday with Howard the lizard, while in the kitchen later looking out the window I noticed a lot of bee activity down at the hive.  I went out back to see what was going on and the buzz was a really loud hum and bees were everywhere between the hive in the tree and the big oak tree across the way....thousands of bees buzzing.  As we kept watching we noticed that they were starting to mass on a branch up in the nearby oak tree.  The mass was larger than a basket ball.  After a few hours there wasn't the crazy bee activity because they all seemed to be glued together up in the tree.  While it was forming, blobs of bees would drop to the ground and they would fly back up.  The breeze would cause it to undulate and by dark they had meshed into almost smooth sides....I wonder how the ones in the center breathed.

The dots are bees.

Later Friday night we got big wind and heavy rain and Saturday morning I wondered if they would still be there or dead on the ground, but a look through the binoculars showed that they were still there.  Saturday we took Seth back to his Mom, meeting her in Yreka.  It had poured rain all day and was very windy.  When we got home just before dark the ball of bees was smaller and it looked saturated with rain and the bees appeared dead, and there was quite a pile of dead looking bees on the ground.

The blob is above Seth's head near the top
of the picture...dark.

Sunday morning I went online and did some research on bee swarms.  The hive was probably crowded and about 60% of a hive will leave following a queen, they swarm to a spot nearby their former hive and hang out waiting for scouts to find their new home.  They only have about three days to find their home as they aren't making food during this time and they will starve and die, if the weather doesn't get them.  


Sunday was sunny and as the day warmed we saw that the dead looking bees were actually alive.  It took them most all day to revive and dry out, but by nightfall the ball had reformed....amazing creatures.


Monday we figured was the day they would leave and Larry was keeping an eye on them because he wanted to see where they headed.  But as persnickety as nature can be, he let his attention drop for a few minutes when he went inside the house and when he came back out the bees were all gone.  There were a few stragglers but the thousands that made up that large ball were gone.  Wow.  If I had better internet I would be able to upload some video, because if you have never seen bees swarm, it is something to see.

This is a wild shooting star.