A few days ago something happened that I have never seen before.  A swarm of bees decided to take up residence on our arbor. Robert was heading out into the back yard around 6 pm when he came dashing back into the house, yelling “Nobody go outside!”. We ran to the window, and there, circling in a loud and frantic mass over the top of our arbor, was a swarm of honey bees. There were hundreds of them, diving and zooming around in a large cloud, and the noise from their wings was quite loud.  We stayed watching from the windows for a few moments. Rob called our neighbors who keep a bee house thinking their bees had escaped. They came over to look and not only were those bees not theirs, they pointed out a small but growing clump of bees on an overhang of the arbor. Within minutes, the clump of bees had grown to this:

 

The bees were in the process of establishing a new colony. It was unlikely that they would establish one on our arbor, but rather that they (or more accurately, the queen) had decided to take a break for the evening.  The honey bees follow the queen’s scent and so once she had landed on a spot they converged on her.

In another couple of minutes, the cloud of bees was gone and they were almost all hanging in a large clump:

 

The bees were very docile – apparently when swarming they are the least aggressive they will ever be. We were able to get up close and several landed on cole’s shirt (and hair), which didn’t bother him one bit:

 

We called the Alameda Beekeeper’s hotline and within 40 minutes a beekeeper showed up with a beekeeper outfit and a box. Using our stepladder, he climbed up to the the bees and with a small hand broom he brushed most of the bees into a cardboard box in one stroke. He then quickly placed the lid on the box and left it (it had a small hole under the lid) on the top step of the ladder. He was able to get most of the bees into the box (unfortunately a few got into his beekeeper outfit and under his shirt!).  The bees that didn’t make it into the box will eventually die as they will be unable to join or establish a colony without a queen.  After a day or so, most of the remaining bees were gone with a few poor individuals buzzing around the site of the bee clump, probably wondering where everyone went to.  It was a good deal more exciting than alarming and interestingly the kids were disappointed that we didn’t start up a bee colony with our temporary guests!