What's all the buzz about?
 

Friday morning walked onto the patio with the dog to drink my morning java and the dog runs over the apple tree to do his morning dump, I thought. I notice he's preoccupied by something so I mosey over and see this dark clump hanging not 5 feet off the ground. A honeybee swarm! Very cool looking and shaped like a very large football. Hard to guess, but looks to be 10,000+ clustered together.

Google helped me figure out there isn't a nest only a large glop of bees that split from another colony that had grown too large. Our small tree was only a temporary residence until their scouts found better digs. I left them alone, which meant keeping my dog away, and they flew off by that afternoon for their new permanent home.

Pretty instresting stuff about their way of life here...
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April06/swarm.quorum.ssl.html

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1212942582.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1212942629.jpg

I hope you had a nice telephoto lens for that last shot. I dont like bees.

What's with the neighbor's tv antenna? Do folks still use those out there?

i had a friend that took a big rock a threw at one of those... it was quite fun to see.....lmao

I would think smoke would be better than a rock for making them go away.

Maybe call a bee keeper to come get them

terry, call an apiary. They will pay good money for that honey bee hive.

bees are fine
Have to note, we don't have any mix breed crazy bees in Europe

here we just need to worry about wasps, them buggers come looking for anything sugary, and they are more agressive, since they don't need to worry about dying if they sting, unlike bees who can only sting onces and then croak
bees also don't look for sugar, they just look for nectar...which i don't have in my house

i wouldn't even mind if they decided to set up camp permanently in my garden, really wouldn't
they generally go about their business, pollinating everything, if you have a cherry tree, you need these little buggers or else you get no cherries...

There is a global bee virus going around, and here in California USA, bees are worth real money because of their importance to agriculture. It would almost be a crime to kill the hive. Even wasps are important to agriculture. They are the only way that figs can be pollinated, and the fig crop is a multi million dollar crop too.

No hive, just a swarm. That's a solid bee ball, no honeycomb, no eggs, no young bees. They are very non-aggressive in this mode as they are not protective. When I came home 6 hours later, they were gone except for a few stragglers. They followed their well documented MO to the T.


Regarding roof antenna... my house has two antenna. It was to get HD TV from PBS and other local networks that weren't being broadcast by Directv until very recently. I still watch my local HD via the antenna because there is zero compression which makes a better picture. As for my neighbor behind me? Who knows? :D

Lot of aerials on roofs that are not hooked up, people just don't bother to take them down until they get a new roof