A little bit about bees

Wild comb in tree

When they swarm, bees are looking for a new home. The process typically goes something like this. Ada Bee (actually she is Ada231 because with 50,000 bees in the hive her mum - the queen - runs out of names and they get recycled) starts to sense that the brood box is getting too crowded, She finds herself bumping into too many bees on the comb - "whoops, sorry dear, oi mind those elbows - now look what you done, all me pollen spilt." So she starts to think it’s time to move house and surprise, finds around half the colony, including the queen feels the same way. So a few of the bees make sure there are some princesses to take mum’s place by developing some queen cells and feeding the larvae on royal jelly. When these ladies are almost ready to hatch it’s time to go.

The inside of the hive is a really exciting place to be. Everybody is buzzing around, filling themselves up with honey for the journey, packing their things, saying tearful farewells to neighbours and acting with all the holiday-like excitement that goes with moving house.

First a few, then more bees start to fly around making loud buzzing noises near the hive. Fred21 in the hive next can’t hear himself think for the noise, his newspaper lies discarded on the floor and he hunts around for ear-plugs.

By now thousands of bees are in the air, happy and noisy, some of them are scouting nearby trees and bushes looking for a place to assemble before finding a permanent home elsewhere. Then somebody - in this case Madonna780 - comes back and tells the others about an oak tree two minutes flying distance away that looks comfortable. She’s got a reputation for being an air-head and she’s been known to be wrong in the past so a few dozen bees go and check it out and come back with the news that it
works for them.

The noise is massive, 20,006 bees, suddenly swirl off in an intimidating crowd, including the queen, George91 who somehow got caught up in this nonsense, Cecilia561 from a nearby hive who lost her way home and that idiot Mavis237.

They fly up and up like a beautiful black storm cloud in a summer wind until they reach the top of an oak tree nearby. They settle in a huge cluster on a branch and the queen, who was one of the last to leave the apiary is now somewhere in the middle. Already more scouts are off looking for a hole in a tree, a cavity in the wall of the nearby hospital or perhaps that abandoned More wild combbeehive half a mile away. They come back and report by waggle-dancing across the face of the swarm-cluster; upwards and downwards, round and round in a figure of eight they dance in an intricate map and route much more precise than a sat-nav - ‘north by north-west, five minutes flying distance, the old shed near the comfrey patch.’ The trouble is they can’t all agree and more and more scouts waggle-dance to different patterns. In the end they decide to hang around for a while and decide tomorrow.

Tomorrow, same confusion and even with loads of girls checking out the options they still can’t decide.

Now in all regular well brought up swarms sooner or later a decision will be made and off they go again but in the case of the Awkward Swarm something different happened.They stayed put. Instead of finding a safe, comfortable DARK interior somewhere the bees began to build comb on the branch nearly 30 feet above the ground and they stayed there. Two or three months went by and none of the humans below suspected there was a phenomenon developing above their heads - a wild colony in the open air but away from the beaten track. Then one warm day in mid October somebody looked up and saw it - a mass of wild comb, regularly shaped like thick leaves in a book, each space between crammed with bees. He told the beekeeper who scratched his head and said slowly, okay I’ll deal with it, then walked away thinking how the hell am I going to get that thing down?

Plans like sawing off the branch above, covering the whole thing with a thick plastic sack, saw off the branch below and lower it on a rope? Or maybe build a makeshift box from plywood and cover the colony so that it will get through the winter? Still thinking folks........

(The bees eventually vacated the hive and the hive fell down from the wind - but it was great while it lasted!)