Bees On the Move

When space in a hive get cramped a bee queen will leave the hive with a contingent of worker bees.  This is called swarming.  In preparation for this the queen lays eggs for her replacement  and after scouting a new location off they go.

 

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This swarm flew right over my head a few years ago.

You can learn more about this bee behavior here

Bee Swarm

I've had bugs crawl across the lens of a trail camera from time-to-time.  It's annoying but bugs gotta do what bugs gotta do.

If you get an ant infestation in your trail camera all you have to do is disassemble and No Pest Trip and cut a chunk of the yellow strip and stuff in the case of the camera.

Viola!.  Bugs be gone. 

But this was different.  Anytime you fetch an SD card from a trail camera and there are 1287 photos on it you know something has gone terribly wrong.  These flying insects showed-up in the early afternoon in large numbers and stayed until dusk.  The next day they were gone.  Here's a sampling of the pics with the time stamps.  

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I call bee swarm.

Giant Swarm of African Killer Bees!

Last weekend I was out working in my vast garden and had to interrupt my progress to fetch a tool from The Frau's potting shed.

Rummaging-about the old pump house - now potting shed - I heard a rumble of buzzing. 

My first thought was that there was another nest of hornets above.  Between the ceiling and the roof.  Better fetch the hornet bomb - I was thinking.

It grew louder!

Exiting the shed I was startled to see a humongous swarm of thousands of honey bees milling about the apple tree.

They moved to the shed.

From there to above the shed.

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And vanished to the east.

Amazing!

*I was kidding about the killer bees.  These were honey bees.