This is just so interesting I just had to share. As many of you may already know, my husband is a beekeeper. Some people have one or two pets, we have hundreds of thousands! I have always loved honey, it's a known and strong antibacterial, I put it in my tea, I give it to my kids when they're sick or have a sore throat. When I got into skincare, I also learned that it is just amazing for the skin so I found ways to incorporate it into my formulations. So when my husband announced that he wanted to start keeping bees, I had no objections!
Bees are truly the most remarkable creatures. The more I learn about them the more I am just in awe. So yesterday when my husband was cutting grass near the hives (we have 11 of them!) he just happened to look up in to the trees above the hives and this is what he saw. Those bees are just hanging from each other.
What is this you ask? This is a 'swarm' of bees from one of our hives, this swarm left the hive with a new Queen. They basically seceded from the Union! They leave because their current hive was getting too crowded and they needed to find a new home. Here's a closeup of the swarm.
The problem is you can't leave a swarm in the tree like this. Soon, if they don't find a home, they will all dissipate. And with the impending heavy rain and winds yesterday we (he, my husband) needed to get them out of the tree and into a permanent home. Yikes! So how to do that? Well, you have to get them out of the tree and put them someplace with enough space that they can begin to build a new hive with their new Queen. And yes, it is done by hand. My husband decided to cut the limb with the swarm attached to it then put the bees into a temporary hive box until he can transfer them into a permanent hive. He cuts the limb down and shakes the bees into the temporary hive box. Here's my husband up on a ladder cutting the limb with the swarm attached to it. I was not very happy at this point.
So anyway, down came the limb and all the bees. There were bees EVERYWHERE, it was quite disconcerting! You really have to see it to believe it. So . . . I took video of the entire event. The video might be a bit shaky, at points I got a bit nervous as you might imagine. So here it is! If you enlarge it to full-screen mode you can see it better. Listen carefully, you can hear the thousands of bees . . . and no, he never got stung . . . really amazing!