I know most folks know the importance of honey bees and successful garden and crops. We have a friend who is a full time bee man, he keeps around 30 hives at our place most of the year. The bee yard is about 75 yards north of our house, up next to a deep pine swamp that has been full of water the last 6 months. He has probably 10 more bee yards around the county and this one is the only one he can easily get to because of the wet conditions. Weather permitting, he will soon move the bees to a creek where the Tupelo trees are located. After the Tupelo honey is extracted he brings the bees back in time for pollinating our garden and what ever field crops are planted.
All this to set the stage for what happened last Saturday. After working around the yard and garden site, my wife and I were sitting in our rockers on the front porch and she says "Do you hear that? What is it"? I said it sounds like bees. The sound was loud enough for me to hear and then it seemed to move on. Later in the afternoon, I was trying to do a little mowing around the smokehouse and ran across a big wad of bees on the ground. Looked like the wad was 16 inches across and 4 or 5 bees deep. I called my friend and told him what I had found and he said he had already planned to come to the bee yard in a little while. I got a few pictures of the bees and he showed up about 30 minutes later. He looks at the bees and runs his hand through the pile of bees and finds the queen. He went to the truck and got a frame (Wood/wax section) and put the queen on the wax. He held the frame by the swarm of bees on the ground and all the bees marched over to the frame and climbed on. He then put the frame with all the bees in a hive. Here's a few pictures of the event.
After this there were probably 20 or 30 bees still on the ground, milling around, no dead one and all gone Sunday morning. Amazing critters!
Treefarmer
Amazing! I wonder what made her leave the hive??? Nothing like some ole honny comb. I use to have an uncle that kept bees.
:saluting
Back before our rear neighbors moved in, there was a beehive in their yard. We have a crepe myrtle tree back close to it and it would bloom way better than the other one we had in the front yard. After the neighbors moved in and got rid of the bees, it's never bloomed like it use to.
Those bees were docile as well. I would mow back close to their hive and they never bothered me once. I wish that hive was still there.
Honey bees won't mess with you, unless they are africanized. Now those are some bad mofo's that you don't want any part of
Amazing! I wonder what made her leave the hive???
They will just up and move "swarm" for several reasons, like an over crowded hive. Could have been a wild hive that out grew their tree and out looking for a new crib. A buddy of mine keeps bees and I have helped him re home a few wild hives like that. Its pretty cool to see, as long as you can find the Queen they will all follow. I enjoyed helping him work them and they are mostly calm if you are but, boy o boy they can eat you up in a hurry if you piss em off.
