I had a phone call from a friend at a local park to say "There are bees on the swing frame, are you interested?" It just so happened that I had a friend who was, but since he couldn't get there in a hurry, I headed off to stand guard and be on hand to led a hand at redirecting bees.
This lot could not be snipped and pruned into their box - the park might not have approved of us chopping up the swing frame....but just look how they had wrapped around it!
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| the other side was covered too - lovely stripey orange bees again. |
We placed the box on the ground with a pale sheet next to it. A few bees were clustered on the outside of the box,doing their "Nasonov" fanning (the bottoms up thing I mentioned in the last post), which led us to believe that the queen was inside.
As time passed, some bees landed on the sheet, others re-clustered on the swing frame. Then, the bees on the sheet made a nice straight line, and firmly marched their way onto the box.
So, we opened the lid a crack, and in they all went! I was totally fascinated to watch them....and standing around waiting for them to do it themselves was much more fun than trying to herd bees. They are worse than cats!
Periodically we swept the cluster on the frame off, and gradually they would land on the sheet and do the same thing. Clever little critters that they are, nearly all of them ended up in the box!
We wrapped the sheet around, and as far as I know they are now safely in my friend's hive.
so you could say that they made a bee line straight for the box!
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