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
