While using our riding lawn mower to cut the grass at the historic family home, he nearly rode face-first into this swarm of bees. Too bad, we weren’t ready with a bee hive set-up like at Frugal Kiwi.
I suppose we could have called someone looking for a swarm, but I don’t even know how you find someone who wants bees. Are there bee ads on Craig’s List or something?
They flew off sometime later that day. Still … very neat to see. This is only the second clumped swarm I’ve ever seen. The last one hung out for days in one of our pine trees. BUT, Tom and I did see a flying swarm down in Golden a few weeks ago … so big it cast a sizable shadow while in motion. Pretty noisy too.
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I know this post is filed under “Entirely Off Topic” … since we’re writing about bees on a dog blog. However, Lilly and I would still appreciate your help in achieving our goals. Please nominate Champion of My Heart as Best Dog Blog.
We put our name on the list of people willing to be called to remove swarms at our local Bee Club. The Bee Club then passed our name on to the local District Counsel. Then when people called the District Counsel about swarms they were given our number.
The only problem we had was that people didn’t always realize we were just volunteers providing a free service at our leisure, not paid employees-so occasionally people got a bit snippy, but most people were very nice and happy to see us.
Eeeks! Never seen anything like it! btw, I saw a dog sacked out like a puppy horse at a big dog park event we went to today, and I thought of you!
We lived with a huge bee colony, in a old tree at our last house. They never bothered us, even though there were Africanized bees all around. The only time they bothered the dogs was when they decided they liked one of Betsy’s toys and she thought it was fun to chase them. Got her inside before they attacked her.
I had large numbers of bees living on my roof last year. I didn’t want to kill them, especially not with chemicals, but I didn’t want to have them in the house every time I opened the door either. The flaky bee whisperer who had hives he was going to relocate them to — for a hefty price — stood me up.
I procrastinated and coped with bees in the house until it got cold. And this year they haven’t returned. Hoorah.
I’d forgotten @Edie about your bees last year and the flakey bee guy. I’m glad it sort of worked out on its own.
Nice swarm! Note to anyone reading, swarming bees are LESS LIKELY to sting than at any other time. So even though you see a lot of bees, no need to freak. They are just out looking for some new digs.
Thanks, Melanie. I don’t remember the story of how you found your bees or how you got the word out that you were looking.
Wow! That would freak me out!
It’s actually kind of neat, @NoPotCooking. They just hum and squirm around, doing their own thing.