SWARMING BEES

The behavior observed in this video is know as swarming and is part of the natural reproduction cycle of honey bees. Swarming is a response to overcrowding of a bee colony. One or more queens are produced, the new queens leave the hive with hundreds of worker bees and form a massive hanging cone in a location not far from the original hive. The queen is secure in the center of her legions while "scout" bees fly out in search of a new location for a hive, like a hollow tree. A couple of years ago I observed this phenomenon in this same tree and I had seen it before on a job site, it is good to know what I am witnessing.

I believe that I shot this video as the new hive was breaking apart and moving to their new location. I went back to see if I could shoot some stills about ten minutes after the video and they were gone. The buzz is how I first noticed the bees, it took me a couple of minutes to find them in the top of the oak, they must have been upward of forty feet high my camera is only a 10x zoom so it is hard to make out the ball of bees, it was at least the size of a basketball. You can see it in the opening shot the clearest.

On a trip through the Amazon jungle several years ago I had and encounter with wasps which our fearless, super studly, multi-lingual, Spanish guide said were the thing he feared most in the Amazon. This is after I had witnessed him wrestle a cayman and climb a tree to knock a deadly viper to the ground so we could view it. We were on a day hike and were suddenly attacked by a small swarm of these 2" behemoths, we began to run away but I was last in the group and some hefty, old Italian couple were to slow she and I got stung several times. I ended up seeing a Dr. in Rio, but that is another story.