A swarm of bees

For more bee pics, click on the photo and you can check out my Flickr shots I just uploaded. I saw my very first swarm in person last week. It was really fascinating. They were up very high above our hive in the backyard. Mark says that you should look around the bees' environment to kind of check on things and when he did that, he saw this swarm up above. He couldn't tell how long they had been there. Nor could he tell if the bees were some of ours or another group looking for a home or if they were Africanized. He didn't think they were or else we couldn't have stayed under there for as long as we did and watch them.

We watched our bees for a while and we did not really see activity indicating they were flying up to the swarm or vice versa, which I guess was a good thing. And then we had to run to SA for several hours and when we got home early evening, we checked but the swarm was gone. I would have love to have seen them in flight together. Mark says it looks pretty impressive.

Our bees are doing very well. Mark continues to check on them almost daily to make sure there is a healthy amount of activity. They seem to be producing a fair amount of honey for themselves and that is always good. They need to stock up to get them through the winter. I heard Mark tell his uncle that he may be able to separate some of them and divide the hive in two! That would be neat to see.