Thursday, July 9, 2009

Bees!

A couple weeks back, a good friend of mine's feral honeybee hive on his property swarmed. If you didn't know, this is how honeybees reproduce. When a hive gets too crowded, a new queen is born and she leaves, taking about half the worker bees with her. The swarm gathers on a branch near the main hive while scouts look for a new hive location. This stage is where I found them. The sun had just come out after a rain, and the bees were still tightly huddled together and relatively docile.



After my first shot, I decided that I should get a little closer. I grabbed a 10-foot stepladder and climbed up.




Being up in a tree with several thousand bees is quite an experience.