While taking my daily walk in the Sawgrass Lake Nature Preserve in St Pete (which is across the street from my house), I happened to see this:
At first I wasn’t sure if they were going into that tree stump or coming out, but as I got closer I could see scout bees returning:
And knew that it was a swarm that was resting here while the scouts were all out looking for a new home. (When a beehive gets too big, a new queen will be raised and the old one will take half the colony and leave to find a new location.)
Most of the wild honeybees in Florida have been “africanized” (the so-called “killer bees”), but swarming bees are not all that interested in defense (after all, they have no hive yet to defend), so I was able to get pretty close and have a good look:
As the scouts returned, they were “waggle dancing”:
This is their way of telling the colony “I found a good spot—and it’s in THAT direction”. Once enough scouts are pointing to the same spot, the whole swarm will take off and go there. I hung around hoping to catch the moment when they all buzzed away, but alas after two hours they still hadn’t reached a decision, and I was getting hungry. So I left them with the hope that they finally found a nice new spot.
UPDATE: The day after I drafted this diary, I was back at the park for my daily walk and found the swarm gone—but also found some yellow “caution” tape surrounding the tree. One of the rangers told me that the swarm had stayed overnight without relocating, and the park was afraid some fool would mess with them and get zapped, so they decided to bring in a beekeeper to remove the swarm.