| Yesterday 5-8-2014 | Today 5-9-2014 |
 |  |
This is a tree right outside our back door in our (technically US Bank’s) yard. I received an emergency notification of its condition yesterday.
“The internet” claims honeybees are endangered and beekeepers or bee farmers will come collect the valuable honeybee swarm for free. Apparently the old saying is that “a swarm in May is worth a load of hay” but I could not seem to locate any of these kind of beekeepers.
Russian “beekeeper” I called stated following: “I vill com, put in open beskit, children can vatch , I vill explain bees, children vill see. bee is good, not bed. I vill take them to bee farm. 200 dollars. if u vill vait till tomorrow morning 1-vifty. but tomorrow may be they gone. 30% chance they vill stay and make nest on tree. 70% chance they vill leave. maybe they go to neighbors house to leev. maybe your house. I don’t know.”
An internal debate (complemented by generous helpings of external input and insight which seemed to have familiar female voices attached to them) raged overnight between A) the half can of raid which claims 20 foot range + my full body turtle costume and B) calling a professional.
This morning , I was holding Tiki and we happened to look out the upstairs bedroom window for a moment and caught the departure. The swarm lifted off the tree slowly in layers and moved onward in a gigantic cloud. I read afterwards that means they had all agreed on a new home.
“When a honey bee swarm emerges from a hive they do not fly far at first. They may gather in a tree or on a branch only a few meters from the hive. There, they cluster about the queen and send 20 - 50 scout bees out to find a suitable new nest locations. The scout bees are the most experienced foragers in the cluster. An individual scout returning to the cluster promotes a location she has found. She uses a dance similar to the waggle dance to indicate direction and distance to others in the cluster. The more excited she is about her findings the more excitedly she dances. If she can convince other scouts to check out the location she found, they may take off, check out the proposed site and promote the site further upon their return. Several different sites may be promoted by different scouts at first. After several hours and sometimes days, slowly a favorite location emerges from this decision making process. In order for a decision to be made in a relatively short amount of time (the swarm can only survive for about three days on the honey on which they gorged themselves before leaving the hive), a decision will often be made when somewhere around 80% of the scouts have agreed upon a single location. When that happens, the whole cluster takes off and flies to it. A swarm may fly a kilometer or more to the scouted location. This collective decision making process is remarkably successful in identifying the most suitable new nest site and keeping the swarm intact. A good nest site has to be large enough to accommodate the swarm (about 15 liters in volume), has to be well protected from the elements, receive a certain amount of warmth from the sun and be not infested with ants.”
As Mr. Tuchman, our YDT science teacher always exclaimed, “Maasay Hashem”.
Recommended for further entertaining education in animated form on the entire topic, “The Bee Movie”.
