Wednesday, September 22, 2010

BEES.

Last week there was a lot of buzzing going on at the olive tree, a bee swarm looking for a new house.






It settled in the olive tree for a wile and went on its way a few hours later.










The this morning more bees swarming this time in the mandarin tree.
Spring is the season for bees to swarm. Despite being happily housed in their hives, nature has vested within bees the urge to leave home annually in search of ‘greener pastures’. In actual fact, what happens is that the old queen bee leaves the hive with a large colony of her subjects when a new queen, one that the worker bees have raised in the hive, is about to emerge from her cell and make a challenge. By leaving with at least half the hive to support her, the old queen makes room for the new queen to build up the remaining hive to full strength, thus ensuring the continuation of the species, indeed its expansion.

1 comment:

Noela Mills said...

How amazing. Thanks for the insight, Mieke.