Picture this......................
I've had 3 hours of sleep 3 times zones away, been on an airplane for 8 hours and there's a storm coming in and I've got a "Tween" with attitude in tow.
My car, which I spent 45 minutes trying to start 50 miles away from home without AAA, is full of luggage from being out of town and products for a product shoot with a tight deadline.
I pull up to the curb in front of the house I live in and start unpacking the car. Suddenly the air above me begins to hum. A loud hum.
A "there's something happening" hum. Even sleep deprived and weary I would not have missed the hum.
My dad taught me to pay attention to things like the sky humming.
I looked up. The entire sky above my head is filled with thousands of insects ziz-zag-ing just above my head.....could have been a mosquito hatch, but I quickly identified them as bees.
My first thought was, "these could be killer bees". But I quickly dismissed this thought and concentrated on identifying them as honey bees, because we need those, and that would be good karma to have honey bees close by.
About my 6th trip to the car the bees settled on the side of the house and chimney, covering a fair amount of territory. If I hadn't been so bleary from travel I would have been a little more daring with my camera, but at this point, I was more concerned with the incoming rain and the couch than the bees.
An hour passed, a nagging thought sent me back outside to check on the chimney. The bees were gone. As fast as they had arrived, they had disappeared, or so I thought.
I found the bees had left the side of the house and gathered in the little tree in front of the house, right above where I park my car. They neatly formed a portable hive to protect the queen during the upcoming storm.
I've never been this close to this many bees in my life.
"Great," my mind commented, "now I don't have to worry about them swarming into the house thru the chimney. I'll just have to worry about the three feet between me, the bees, and the car."
For days they hung onto the tree just above where I park my car.......thousands of bees.
Each day thru the storm, I noted that they did not even move. No one in the neighborhood
even noticed them hanging in the tree. The portable hive was a little bigger than a
football. The cold and rain kept the bees tightly bound.
When the weather allowed and my courage was strong, I ventured out with my camera and a long lens to snap some photographs. It was harder than I thought, they were only clustered when it was cold and stormy...not the ideal time to shoot photos of moving trees and bees.When the sun came out, I was just a little too leery of being out there alone with thousands of bees.
The sun came out eventually and the bees did what I expected them to do......they moved the hive. What I didn't expect, was that they'd move the hive to the back yard and thrill me for another two weeks.
Wow! Noella, what a great story, a great experience, and great photos. Are they still living with you?
ReplyDeleteGreat story and pictures!
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience, when I was pregnant with Danielle. That strange buzzing noise...the cloud of bees. I called my Dad at the 'garage' and he said not to worry, stay indoors and he called the county bee keeper. When a hive gets too crowded, a 2nd queen is born, and she takes off with half the hive, looks for a new place to set up house. They often will settle on a tree branch near dusk to overnight on their journey to find the right place. The beekeeper came around sunset, and snipped the branch they were on...easy to spot since all those bees weighed the branch down and it was right over the driveway. She thanked us, because this is a primary way beekeepers can stock a new hive.
ReplyDelete