Bees take a very pragmatic approach to housing the younger generation; Mum simply moves out leaving a perfectly good home for the kids to raise a family.
This makes sense. The youngsters are strong and virile, so providing a home in a desirable location helps ensure survival of the next generation. But it does leave Mum with a problem - she finds herself homeless.
Not that she's on her own. Usually when she leaves the hive the old queen takes about 10,000 workers with her in a swarm. Initially the swarm rests somewhere before sending out scout bees to find new lodgings. However, this lack of forward planning means that the bees can be homeless for days. Sometimes they die, especially if they are a small swarm, but mostly they find new accommodation in someone's house or garden shed, which is when the trouble really starts.
If they're lucky a beekeeper will coax the bees out of their newly found cavity and into a hive, but often times swarms are a nuisance and are destroyed by pest control companies.
So you will understand the sense of urgency we had earlier this week when we went to collect a swarm that had settled on an old apple tree.
The swarm had arrived that afternoon, but by the time we got there it was raining and getting dark. In the gloaming we could make out the bees on the trunk of the tree ... and on a branch .... and on another branch ... and on another branch. This swarm was huge; probably 30,000 bees!
Catching 30,000 bees in the pouring rain at dusk is not easy, but two hours later we had most of them inside a small box (called a nuc), with a thousand still queuing to get in. The nuc was evidently too small, but by carefully wrapping the box and remaining bees in a sheet we managed to safely get them into the car.
These bees really needed a full size hive, but because there have been so many swarms this year there is no spare kit available, which is causing a housing crisis. With a bit of juggling the bees could be re-homed in a day or two, but in the meantime there was a risk they might decide to decamp to somewhere better.
My worst fears were confirmed that evening - the nuc box was empty!
I was gutted - until I noticed that the hive next door was over-flowing with bees.
It seems the swarm had simply decided to squat in their neighbour's hive, and the incumbents accepted them willingly rather than leave them homeless.
I think we could learn something from bees. What do you think?
