What to do about the bees?
Well, it is now Day 9 of Bee Watch in my garden. The bee removal people (AA Bee Removals) left an explanatory letter with their invoice when they left and it included this bit:
As we never kill bees you may notice a few bees buzzing around the old site for a few days. This is quite normal and they should soon disappear. We do endeavour to catch the queen and put her, along with all the bees, in a box but sometimes she flies off into a nearby tree and we cannot find her. When that happens the remaining bees will gather around her where they will hang in a cluster, like a bunch of grapes, for a few days.
At this point they are quite harmless as they have no hive to protect. If, however, they are not gone after five to seven days we will come back and remove them at no further cost to you.
This "bunch of grapes" has been moving up the tree trunk for the last couple days and today it looks a bit like this:
It is pretty amazing and scary at the same time. I just hope these buggers are not going to re-establish themselves. Unfortunately there is little information on the Web about the dynamics of these swarms and what it means when they move around like this as a group. Its difficult to tell if they are going to move on or if they are just entrenching themselves again.
I think I am going to call the bee people back if the bees are still clustered like this tomorrow.
