Imagine our surprise when one day out of the blue THIS appeared on our cherry tree in our front yard:
Yep, you're seein' it right...that's a big ole blob of bees. They're not crawling ON something--there's no nest there, oh, no! Those are bees all the way through, a big football-sized wad of honeybees. Needless to say, we didn't get TOO close! Still, it was one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile (almost as cool as seeing a real live tarantula patientily crossing the road out in New Mexico one time...wish I still had that picture!!)
My S.O. calls up a local beekeeper to come get these babies because bees are in short supply and we need them around here, so killing them was out of the question. We had a chuckle
when it was the apprentice beekeeper who showed up (I think he was the grandson of the main guy) who had never done this before. But he got dressed in his getup and mask and was able to shuffle them into a box. He was after the queen, because the bees will go wherever the queen goes. He told us we'd know if he didn't get her because the blob would basically reappear (there were still a few buzzing around that weren't attached to the main tangle). But they never did reappear and eventually the leftovers buzzed off elsewhere so he was successful in capturing the queen (checkmate!)
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