Bee Scare for Joy

[Cornelia]

Last weekend we went to Ticino, south Switzerland (by car...) and I was indoors when I heard my husband give a shout and tell Joy to go into the house immediately! When I looked out of the window, I could see the neighbours bees had swarmed out (the bee keeper gave us an estimate of 200'000 bees!!!).

We hoped they might go a bit further but they decided to gather on our laurel tree. I could not take a photo of the whole cluster but it was about 80-100cm long and 40cm in diameter. Here you can already see the bee keeper's head, who was trying to fix a rope to our laurel tree near the cluster of bees.

The bees were too high up to get them down, so he had to shake them out of the tree...

...in hope that they might settle down a bit lower again!

He finally managed to cut off a branch in hope that the queen was amongst the group - this is only a small part of the lot(!) - and went home with it. He was lucky and once the queen was back home, the rest returned. End of story four hours later - or not yet! 

Even with the best of precaution, Joy was not that lucky and stepped into a bee that evening and again the next day until we finally managed to get rid of the few that were stil left on the ground. And yet, Joy was lucky: The first sting did not hurt and with the second one, painful as it was, she did not show any bad reaction to it!! I found both stings and Joy was ever so tired afterwards and probably dreamt of bees...

One Corpus Delicti:

Just one last photo, taken the weekend before on another location, to show that they are actually beautiful creatures.

[Chantal McIlveen-Wright]

Wow Cornelia what a story!!! yet it is part of living with the Nature, but I prefer to read it than being involved... :-(

Poor Joy having to suffer from it .. and what a wonderful picture of her sleeping in the grass ... absolutely beautiful photo!! Thanks for this report Cornelia as I did not know that Lady Queen Bee could fly away from the heeve and create such a havoc, very interesting, and as usual ... great pictures.

[Robert Krajnc]

What an adventure!

[Laura Kolbach]

uh, richtige horrorstory - aber mit schönen bildern!

[Corinne Wakefield]

What a story.... so scary too for you all. Glad Joy is OK.

[Myra Thomas-Rhodes]

Ye Gods!!! What a nightmare for you!   We have had two swarms here, that have settled in very low branches where the Setters could reach. Extremely worrying until they can be moved on! Stay safe, Joy.

 

[Peter Hennig]

WOW glad Joy is ok bees are amazing I like the bee keeper with no gloves

[Cornelia]

:-)) This is how the bee keeper handled his 'pets':

[Carmel Murphy]

Super photos Cornelia;o) But a very frightening episode!! At least Joy was OK;o))

[Barbara]

Zum Glück ist es halbwegs gut ausgegangen. Tolle Bilder!

[Nadine Bonjean]

Super photos! But what a story...