Honey Bee Swarm

Speaking of swarms, I have seen lots of honey bees in my day, more than I care to, but never a swarm until this time. I love honey. Mmmm, remember Mom’s honey oatmeal bread? I am fascinated with their social activity and comb building skills. They provide a much needed and valuable pollinating service, more recently brought to light by the strange and unexplained disappearance of bees around the country. Catch the
buzz at:

In the heyday of USDA’s involvement in the support of honey production, I visited dozens of apiaries, inspected the extraction of honey, sampled hundreds of honey containers, and back in the 1980’s, was responsible for the intake, sampling, and warehousing of honey. At one point, I had over 495,000 pounds of honey in storage waiting for government surplus food processing. We still offer price support on stored honey to producers; such is the importance of bees.

But I had never seen a honey bee swarm. I can show you a bee tree on the hill (if it’s still there), one that would make Pooh feel like he was in honey heaven. But I had never seen a swarm. Science tells us that bees swarm when they’re sick of the current interior decorator, their hive is not big enough, or they have two queen bees and anyone who has ever worked in an office knows that is not a good thing.

This swarm appeared last summer a few feet from our front porch at our neighbor’s in Painted Post. The curious thing is that they had a bee keeper remove the swarm, and two days later, another swarm appeared in the same bush.

Tomorrow: When Pigs Fly