The Birds and THE BEES

Ana went out to find the cats and saw a big black thing in the middle of our plum tree. She went close to inspect what it was. Her head was in the branches when she realized it was a swarm of bees. She came running in the house and we all went to see....then we called for help. Here is the swarm in our tree out by the barn. The guy we buy honey from came and put the box up on the ladder and under the swarm then shook it hard. The goal was to get the queen into the box. It must have worked. You can see them swarming after he shook them and then settled on the entrance to the box. He suggested we spray the limb where they were originally with vanilla to overpower the smell of the queen so they wouldn't return to the branch. Joseph bravely sprayed the limb since a handful of bees were going back to the branch after the bee keeper left. It worked. The limb actually has bits of wax on it where the bees were beginning to make a honeycomb or hive. We'll look at that closer after he comes back this evening and takes the box. It was a small adventure.