{"id":18,"date":"2009-05-03T20:08:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T02:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2012-07-13T15:30:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T21:30:22","slug":"bees-in-my-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/bees-in-my-backyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Bees in My Backyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bees1\"There is nothing quite like seeing wild creatures.\u00a0 Movies are informative and provide beautiful imagery, but nothing can replace actually being right there yourself.\u00a0 Such was the case with our backyard a week ago.<\/p>\n

At about 2:30 PM on this particular afternoon, I was passing by the kitchen window and noticed that the air above our nearly half acre backyard was busy with a crowd of bugs.\u00a0 They were moving rapidly, creating a thin haze with their numbers and movement.\u00a0 I wondered if they were something like Mayflies or dragonflies, such as we have enjoyed before.\u00a0 Their bodies were both shorter and thicker in proportion, though.\u00a0 The glint of their wings in the sun reminded me of flies and I shuddered at the thought.\u00a0 Then we noticed that a black lump of something was forming on the underside of a lower branch of my small apricot tree in the middle of the yard.\u00a0 It quickly passed softball size and was soon the size of a house cat.\u00a0 The \u201chaze\u201d was thinning, and we ventured out onto the back patio.<\/p>\n

From this vantage we could see that our visitors were bees.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of bees.\u00a0 The mass on the tree was a huge wiggling colony.\u00a0 We decided it was time to take some photographs.<\/p>\n

\"bees2\"<\/p>\n

None of the bees were aggressive, but their buzzing, as well as past experience with stingers, encouraged us to keep some distance away.\u00a0 They seemed to have only one purpose in mind;\u00a0 they wanted to congregate on my tree.\u00a0 I re-evaluated my idea of mowing the lawn that day and called to\u00a0 share the excitement with my parents.\u00a0 Mom proved once again to be an excellent web-researcher and promptly provided me with two websites for reference.<\/p>\n

The Bee Gum<\/a><\/p>\n

The recommended course of action was to call a bee keeper.\u00a0 The Canyon County Extension Office very politely gave me four possible contact phone numbers.\u00a0 One of the bee keepers answered the phone and confirmed that, yes, he would very much like to come get the bees.\u00a0 How would tomorrow morning before sunrise work?
\nThe North Carolina State University\/A & T State University Cooperative Extension website (\u201cBee Swarming Season\u201d) gives a very nice explanation of what the bees were doing in my yard.\u00a0 As it predicted, they were soon all settled down for the night.\u00a0 When Greg came home, he was able to walk right up to the tree for some close up photos.\u00a0 Since he survived, most of the rest of us took a closer look and marveled at the living lump.<\/p>\n

\"bees3\"<\/p>\n

The bee keeper arrived at 7 AM the following morning.\u00a0 He lives in Middleton, a nearby town, and is a hobbyist, only keeping a few hives for honey.\u00a0 He said that many of the bee keepers ship the bees off to California, so I was glad that I had ended up with him and that the bees would stay local.\u00a0 He approached with his empty hive box and placed it under the tree.\u00a0 I could see pieces of old honey comb in it.\u00a0 Then he donned his protective gear.<\/p>\n

\"bees4\"<\/p>\n

\"bees5\"<\/p>\n

\"bees6\"<\/p>\n

The next step was to gently knock the bees onto the screen-forms from the hive.\u00a0 Most of them fell obligingly, like fluffy scoops of cake batter.\u00a0 This was the advantage of coming before the daylight had awakened them to activity.\u00a0 After a while, some of them even began flying into the hive themselves.\u00a0 He said that if they had been on a smaller branch, he would have cut it off and held it right over the hive to bump them in all at once.<\/p>\n

We lost track of time while watching him.\u00a0 In part, we were fascinated with his methodical, patient\u00a0 strokes.\u00a0 There was also an element of holding our breath, wondering if the bees would all of a sudden revolt.\u00a0 They never did.\u00a0 After he put his tools down, and removed his gloves and bee hat, he waited a while for some to fly into the box.\u00a0 He even used his bare hands to flick several more off of the tree.<\/p>\n

\"bees7\"<\/p>\n

\"bees8\"<\/p>\n

There were about 40-50 bees left when he was done and gone.\u00a0 They must have been woken up enough to go buzzing around, but they came and waited on the branch for a couple more days.\u00a0 A few dead ones were seen on the ground, but we don\u2019t really know what happened to most of those that were left behind.\u00a0 The beekeeper said that if somehow he hadn\u2019t gotten the queen in the hive, they\u2019d all be back, but he\u2019d just come get them again.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t come back to stay, but they can visit my garden any time they want to.<\/p>\n

\"bees9\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is nothing quite like seeing wild creatures.\u00a0 Movies are informative and provide beautiful imagery, but nothing can replace actually being right there yourself.\u00a0 Such was the case with our backyard a week ago. At about 2:30 PM on this particular afternoon, I was passing by the kitchen window and noticed that the air above […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3,19],"tags":[38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}