I come home from work today and I see a few bees flying around, then I hear a low buzz so I look up and on the tree that is right in front of my 2nd story apartment there is a huge swarm of bees. There has to be hundreds of them crawling all over each other like a sick bee orgy. Whats worse is that on the branches around them there are dozens of groups of 5 or 6 bees clustered together watching the mother swarm.
I moved to So Cal last year from NY and have never seen something like that in my life. Truly surreal.
I wonder if I should do anything about it. The few websites I visited about bee keeping said that the swarm should move on in a day or two. I sure hope so.
If they’re honeybees, you can try calling a local beekeeper to come and get the swarm. That’s what we would do in our rural area, but beekeepers are a dime a dozen here.
The bees should move on within anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 days. They are really non-aggressive when they are swarming. I had a swarm in my yard a couple of years ago. Bees everywhere, on the car, doors and windows and swirlling around the whole yard with a creepy, low throbbing sound. 15 minute later … not a sign of them.
If you want to do a local beekeeper a favor you could contact them to come pick up the swarm. It’s like getting a free hive of bees.
If, at some point, you find the swarm is inside your window, run.
Meanwhile, shameless hijack, I’ll just mention that I received a notice of a hazardous situation earlier today in which the person who wrote it up listed the hazard as “Bea flying around another employee”. Lest it seem a simple typo, the full description was “I saw a bea flying around the employee’s arm. Told him that he needed to move alway so the beas will not get him.”
He saw Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith Show flying around? What?
If they’re still there tomorrow there might be a beekeeper interested in free bees. I don’t do it any more, but we used to tell the local extension office to give folks our number.