I was working in the garden Friday and heard a jet… which isn’t surprising since there is a lot of air traffic over our property.  It actually sounds like some big military aircraft… then again it didn’t sound like an aircraft at all.  I stopped what I was doing and looked toward where the sound was coming from… holy crap!  It was thousands of bees flying my way.  I made a beeline (ha) to the garden shed and just watched as they moved across the garden and into the big cottonwood tree on the south end of the garden.

Once I realized I wasn’t in some Hitchcock movie (or Irwin Allen in the case of the 1978 classic, The Swarm), I headed back out to watch this amazing event.

The basic idea of a bee swarm is that the bee colony has grown to big for their original hive.  The work bees raise a new queen, scout bees look for a new location, and once they find a suitable new home, the new queen, worker bees and drones fly off to greener pastures.  You can learn more about swarming on the Beemaster site.