Perfection in Nature....Honey Bees

These summer days are a godsend….there is such warmth and delight in a carefree sunny day. Actually, the years of rain on end seem like a distant memory for most of us right now (thankfully!) because we had forgotten what blue sky was like.

I don’t know about you, but I have also loved watching summer blossom and come into it’s own this year. Perhaps because for the past few years I have only watched from the window through the sheets of rain – venturing out in wellies and coat to work in the garden.

So, this brings me to my garden – yesterday the most extraordinary thing happened for us…but first I will tell you a story.

We have bees. We like bees and for the most part they seem to like us too. But, there is nothing quite like bees choosing to come to you. With this in mind, each summer we put out our old nucs (bee boxes) with some old honey comb in it just to see if we can attract a wild swarm.

Mostly – scout bees come around, take a look, spend days cleaning out the old comb and then leave. We hadn’t heard about many swarms over the years as the bees are in serious decline, in fact – and they appeared to be getting rarer in our vicinity.

Ever hopeful, this year was no different. We have several bee boxes around the place (the chickens are laying in one of them!) with one strategically located on the corner of my herb garden.

I have been watching a few bees coming and going for the past week or so around the herb garden bee box – which is entirely usual as they check things out. Then they all went away and we didn’t see anything for a full day, until…..

Yesterday almost exactly at noon (it was another warm bright sunny day) we could hear them coming – it was as if I was standing in the middle of a hive. The bees massed overhead in a cloud and then moved over to the herb garden.

In an almost perfect spiral they moved downwards over about 10 minutes or so as they filled the nuc box and sorted out their new digs. In the meantime we were all standing around the herb garden in absolute awe at this entire process unfolding before our eyes.

We tried to get photos and a video – but nothing was charged up enough – and I didn’t have the presence of mind to get a mobile phone. I guess it was just one of those things….

An unbelievable display of the workings of nature – and I am so impressed. 

April