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Thanks to Mary Holt for sending these photos that tell the story of a heart shaped swarm that landed near her Cotswold Cottage in England a few weeks back. Splendid, eh? I love everything about them… the storybook cottage, the garden, Mr. Crabtree, the captions…

“the first photo I sent you shows the dormer window beside which the bees entered the roof. Unlike most dormer windows that have solid sides, ours have glass in the east-facing side because the view is so extensive and beautiful. (The bees must have agreed when they chose that spot to live for a while). That is how I came to observe them at such close quarters while they lived up in the attic.”

Bees, down from the roof to the rose tree.

Bee swarm in the rose tree.

“The garden is my absolute joy.”

Mr. Crabtree gathering the bee swarm at Oatleyhill Farm.

“You could not wish for a more gentle mentor. I was up at his place recently where he was inspecting a brood box and transferring some bees to another hive. He had told me that bees love goose feathers as a ‘brush’ to persuade them to move, and there I saw him use these enormously long white feathers bound together into a perfect tool. It looked as if they had come from part of a wing. He gently stroked the bees off the frames with them and they were extremely calm.”

Bees safely into the skep.

It’s swarm season – a relentless and exhilarating time of year. Have you ever experienced a honeybee swarm? I didn’t until I became a beekeeper. Now they’re a joyful (and exasperating) part of my spring routine. Joyful because they’re beautiful to watch. And exasperating because they never check in with me about my schedule before arriving.

To witness a honeybee swarm is to witness an exodus. The first thing you notice is an elevated buzz as thousands of bees exit the hive. They fly en masse – a living cloud – before forming a cluster around the queen. I like watching the cluster form. The queen lands on a twig or a branch or a wall (or sometimes even the ground). The bee cloud collapses around her becoming a dense mass of bees. There’s something alchemical about the process. Like watching a liquid go to gas and back to liquid again.