Thursday, August 28, 2014

Honey Buckets


  Honey; Funny

This morning I watched the flurry of birds in the yard, and noticed a particularly heavy population of honey bees flitting about the flowers we planted to attract humming birds.  That reminded my of the scene (maybe the most poignant and heart rendering  scene in movie history (after the Gayle Sayer's eulogy in Brian's Song); the funeral parlor scene where Vada grieves over Thomas J,  who was stung to death by bees.  And that reminded me of a most startling truth.  In my going on 97 years of traipsing about the woods, I have not once seen a beehive in nature.  I mean, it's not that they're tiny little things. WTF? 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had a colony of bees move into the hollow of a tree in my back yard once. I got out the ol yellow pages, found a bee keeper, and he came and captured the queen. The rest wondered off.
Tim

Anonymous said...

The group of bees pictured is a swarm. They are in transit from their old home to a new home which has not yet been identified. A beekeeper would put this swarm in a beehive box. During the swarm time the bees are docile and easily handled without protection. You don't often see colonies of bees because they like hollow spaces such as trees and walls. Lastly, swarms occur when a colony splits thus reproducing. Somewhere in that mess of bees ia one queen.

Anonymous said...

This picture does not show a swarm - if you look carefully at the upper edge of the bees, you can see the wax hexagons of the comb. While rare here in the USA, this type of "hanging" colony is sometimes built. A swarm would be much more spherical and wrapped around the branch.
-- Walkercolt

TimO said...

A guy my wife works with just had to have one whole side of his house removed to clean out 50,000 bees from inside the walls...

Hell_Is_Like_Newark said...

I grew up in suburban NJ. My father was a man who grew up on a farm and insisted on turning our 3/4 acre plot into one.

The bees would swarm at least once a year (dad kept multiple hives) which would end up on the neighbor's property.

Dad hated the people we lived next to so the thought of a massive ball of bees next to their front porch made him smile.

Mike C said...

We had a hive in or front yard for the first time this year.. I talk about it here - with video! . It was a pretty cool experience. Hopefully by the year after next, we'll get honey - if our queen sticks with us..

Firehand said...

One year when the kids were small we were out squirrel hunting, and heard a humming like a big transformer. Knew there weren't any in those woods so went to check it out.

There was a feckin' HUGE swarm in an oak tree; standing under it, it was loud enough to interfere with speaking. Amazing sight.

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.