A swarm of bees

Some pictures from yesterday's bee swarm. All were taken with my main camera and through the window:

During yesterday afternoon, the air at the front of our house was suddenly filled with flying insects. When we first noticed them we thought they were flies buzzing around something, but upon further inspection we saw that they were honeybees. Our immediate response was to close all the windows and bring in the clothing from the line in the backyard.

Unsurprisingly, the massive swarm outside our house drew the interest of the neighbours, but fortunately they were more interested in watching and avoiding the swarm than in bugging us to let us know that we had bees in the front (we were already aware, and my mother was on the phone to the council).

The bees continued to swarm, then decided to form a cluster in this conifer. As they clustered in the tree, fewer bees were flying around the vicinity, and providing people avoided the tree no one was in any immediate danger of being stung. Even so, my mother was on the phone to a local beekeeper after being directed to one by the council.

By the time this was taken the vast majority of the bees has ceased swarming the conifer and had joined their brethren in the cluster. It was quite a sight to watch the cluster grow in size over the course of half an hour!

The beekeeper arrived about an hour after Mum spoke to her on the phone. The lady dealt with the bees by carefully snipping the swarmed branches off the conifer and placing them into a box. Hardly any damage was done to the tree in cutting the branches; in fact, when I look out my window the trimmed area is barely noticeable.

The bees that did not get placed inside the box swarmed the outside of it instead; the beekeeper estimated that the cluster contained some 5,000-10,000 bees alone, and only a few hundred to a thousand did not make it into the box. After the bees had settled down the beekeeper wrapped up the box with all the bees safely inside (I think including some of those on the outside there) and took it and the contents with her back to her apiary in Northampton.

It was an extraordinary experience to observe a swarm of bees in action; it was unexpected, of course, as none of us anticipated a swarm showing up all of a sudden in our front yard. The swarm and its queen are now living in a much safer location than our conifer.