Subscriber Comments for
Bzzzzzz

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 326869	2012-10-02 10:01 AM
That is a swarm, they are moving from an over crowded hive to a new location, two queens in one house does not work out!
COMMENT 326875	2012-10-02 10:13 AM
With the heat, could it be that they are trying to cool the hive by "fanning" it?
THE BARRON	2012-10-02 10:22 AM
Nice shot - Hope you were using a powerful zoom lens.
COMMENT 326888	2012-10-02 10:33 AM
I concur: this is not bees protecting a hive, this is swarming behavior. They're all getting together outside their original hive. Meanwhile a few scouts are out looking for the next suitable site and the queen may very well be mating with a few drones. They'll be gone from this location within 48 hours, usually much less than that. Bees in this state are generally very docile. They don't have a lot to protect at this point (aside from the queen who may not even be in that clump). Remember, bees aggressiveness costs them their lives so they tend to only use it when the their own lives are already in jeopardy (and may be as a reflex) and when the great good of the hive is at jeopardy.
COMMENT 326896P	2012-10-02 10:51 AM
I love bees. Happy they didn't swarm into the walls of my house again this spring, as they did last year. The local bee group sure is a great bunch of people. They set up a "bait out" box, to easily and safely relocate the bees to a better home. The bees were good guests, for a while. Half my house smelled of honey for about two months. It was intoxicating.
COMMENT 326898	2012-10-02 10:54 AM
So nice to see a healthy hive splitting to create another thriving bee colony somewhere else. My co-worker is a beekeeper and I've learned a lot about how much work it takes to keep bees. The bees have to fight off mites and deal with the toxic effects of pesticides - so it is helpful to include some african DNA in the queen to make sure the bees she creates are strong enough to endure in the current environment we have created for them.
COMMENT 326990	2012-10-02 02:18 PM
They may not be swarming. When temperatures rise in the hive, bees will leave the hive to cool it down. The result is the bees "bearding" close to the hive until it cools. When they do "swarm" as mentioned, the queen leaves with a portion of the hive (typically the scouts have already located several options to establish a new hive) and the remaining bees in the hive create a new queen by feeding certain larvae "royal jelly". The first queen to emerge is the new queen. The remaining unermerged larvae are left to die. So, it could be either situation.
COMMENT 327033	2012-10-02 03:54 PM
898, as a gardener in SB for 20 years I'm disturbed by your support of African bee DNA. The threats to native bees might be from pesticides, and mites. But in my home state of AZ there have been several cases of people being killed by African bees.
COMMENT 326896P	2012-10-02 06:12 PM
DAN39: 898 wrote "some African DNA." Some.
COMMENT 326896P	2012-10-02 06:17 PM
Loads of bees in my yard this year. Surprisingly, I haven't seen any of them, the water-collector ones, hanging off my birdbaths. Usually, with this heat, the bees are frantic for water. Saw a gigantic black carpenter bee just a few moments ago. So huge, it's like seeing a black bomber bobbing around the flowers. Bees are so cool.

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