PHOTOS: Swarm of bees buzz into Seahurst yard

Seahurst resident Sherry Neunherz reports that as her 8-year old son was sitting down to do his homework one day last week, he looked out a window and discovered a “huge clump of bees hanging from a branch of the pine tree in our front yard.” As evidenced in the photos below, the very large swarm had made a temporary new home in their yard (click images to see larger versions/slideshow): “He said at first he thought it was a lot of spiders,” Sherry said. “When he asked me to come take a look I saw the huge clump of bees hanging!” The bees created a mild buzzing if you got close, but Sherry said it was “not as loud as you would have expected.” She then searched on the internet for a local beekeepers group and found the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association (http://www.pugetsoundbees.org/), then called for a beekeeper. “The beekeeper brought a hive box and set it at the foot of our tree,” Sherry said. “He then rigged a bucket under the swarm cluster, tied a rope to the branch and basically yanked the branch hard enough for the big clump of bees to fall into the bucket. He then poured the bucket of bees out onto a board at the foot of the hive box. Over the next 15-20 minutes most of the bees walked up the board into the hive box. It appeared the queen fell into the grass instead as there were a bunch of bees that kept piling up on the lawn. After a couple hours of trying to get them to move he eventually moved the hive box where most of the bees were over to the clump on the grass. Those ones finally decided to get in the box that evening and overnight. He picked up the hive box early in the morning and left us some honey as a thank you.” The bees are now presumably at the beekeeper’s home. Fifty or more “scouts” that got left behind keep flying around the area during the day and clumping up in a little ball on the same branch at night. “It is a little sad, but they don’t know what else to do with themselves I suppose,” she added.]]>