Country Views - 'As busy as a bee'

By Tim King

“They are back,” my wife announces with dismay.

I know immediately that the “they” she is referring to is a countless number of feral honey bees. A bee keeper once told me that a commercial hive likely held around 40,000 bees. These bees, which we have grown to refer to as Our Bees, do not  number in the tens of thousands, fortunately. That many bees would not fit in the crevices under the wooden siding of our house. They do, however, number in the many hundreds although, it’s true, I know of no one who has actually counted the bees in any hive let alone the hives right outside our door.

The bees that came back in mid-June had only recently left us, in a noisy swarm, seemingly in search of more adequate housing.

Have you ever seen and heard a swarm of honey bees? It’s like an insect tornado. Hundreds of them all seem to exit the hive simultaneously. That creates a buzzing roar as they all begin flying in tight circles several feet above the, now largely vacant, hive. I’m told that at the heart of that swirling swarm is the queen. There is only one queen per hive and all the other bees, who are without gender, are tasked with protecting their queen.

So, our bees swarmed above their abandoned hives by our outdoor water faucet and, a few feet away, the entry to our house. Their buzz increased in crescendo as they hung in mid-air seemingly pondering their next move. Then they were off and we applauded both their spectacular performance and their absence.

A few days later they were back. There is, apparently, a housing shortage for bees just like there is for humans. Upon returning they moved back into their two previous locations and set to work feeding their queen who, in turn, laid eggs to keep the hive going.

As the summer progressed we learned to co-exist with them and they with us. Multiple times each day we walked just a few feet past the entrance to the hives. Incoming and outgoing bees ignored us and guard bees very briefly checked us out. On occasion, when one of us might stop and watch them work, a guard bee would tap us on our cap encouraging us to move along. It was a suggestion that we respected.

We were able to observe the hives closely through a window from inside the house. We looked on as dozens of bees exited the hive traveling at 40 miles per hour. As they flew rapidly upward each insect caught the rays of the mid-day sunshine and briefly became like a golden spark from a campfire of burning honey. When a bee left the sun light and entered the shadow of a tree it’s honey spark blinked out like an electric light.

The water faucet hive was particularly busy on the late afternoon of July 15. While dozens of bees left the hive at high speed, more than 100 approached its entrance with nectar or pollen that they had collected. Honey bees have very sophisticated air traffic control systems. With hundreds of bees coming and going at full throttle there are no collisions or even near misses. As each bee waits for clearance to enter the hive some of them fly in place by making repeated airborne figure eights while others hold their place by flying back and forth horizontally. Bees pass through the narrow entrance on foot as exiting bees pass them and launch themselves into the sunlight. It looks disorderly to the human eye but bees stream in, and out, of the hive with no apparent bumping or shoving. The hives are busy and organized at times like this.

“She’s as busy as a bee” is a refrain most of us are familiar with. I, at least, have imagined honey bees working pretty steadily through what we humans call the work day. But, upon observation, I’m not sure what our bee’s work schedule is. I am certain that they don’t work when it’s chilly. When that happens all the  worker bees cover the entrance to the hive in a thick blanket of bees in an effort to keep the queen warm, at around 95 degrees. Beyond that, I suspect the bees know when certain plants are releasing nectar or pollen and they only fly during those times. But there are also times when only a handful of bees are at the hive and the rest have seemingly abandoned it. Then, an hour later, the air is filled with hundreds blinking on, and off, as they pass into and out of the sunshine.