Today as I was walking from the cabana down to the coop with the daily catch of fallen mangoes for the compost pile I got a bit of a surprise.  A bee up and stung me in the ear!  I dropped all the mangoes and ran while the bruised and over-ripe fruit started rolling down the hill.  At about the same time the water hose popped and sprung a leak!

Cassie said I looked like a cartoon with my flailing about, yelling and running.  As we were going back towards the cabana there were more bees bumping us, giving us that tell tale warning that they are going to attack.

We got in the cabana and shut the door….. “Holy smokes!  What the hell was that?”  Had we stepped on one on the way down to the coop?  We normally don’t get stung by the few bees that visit the yard, especially having cleared out all the previous hives living within the wood house and the trunk of the old mango tree.  Bees are supposed to only sting when they feel threatened or if the hive is under attack.

After about 10 minutes and looking at my stung ear as it swelled we decided to go back out and see if we could figure out what was going on.  We went up on top of the cabana because it offers a good view.  We weren’t up there 5 minutes and we started getting bumped again by bees.  We ran.  We got back in the cabana and decided that there was something up and that we would give them some time to calm down.  We went to town for some food, groceries and another mower blade.

When we went to let the chickens out Cassie spotted what was causing all the commotion.

Bee Swarm (click to enlarge)

There were quite a few bees on one of the Mexicola avocado tree leaves, so we must have a swarm on our hands.  This is a very small swarm by swarm standards, actually tiny.  This was a perfect opportunity for me to use my newbee bee keeping skills!  I went and grabbed a jar, some scissors, gloves and the bee veil.

It didn’t take very long, and I didn’t get stung but there is a queen in with the swarm.  Not sure where it came from or why it is so small, but it all went well and put an end to the bee sting mystery and I gained 5 experience points in my bee skills!  I would rather do this with a small amount of bees to start with.  If there were hundreds of bees it would have been more intimidating but I think even then I would be up to the task.

We don’t have an empty hive yet, but now we think we should have one around for the next swarm opportunity.  For this group I am just glad they aren’t going to end up inside the walls of the house and I wanted to take care of a potential issue as well as some aggressive bees in the yard. Bees are not known for being aggressive when they swarm.  I think it is possible they were fighting with another hive in the base of the big mango we took down a few weeks ago. There were some bees flying super fast all over today.

Bees in a Jar