Now that the weather has warmed up, some bees are looking for a new home, and a Windsor woman managed to catch a homeless swarm in action in her backyard.
Johanna Lawler posted a video on Facebook of thousands of bees swarming one of her garden sculptures over the weekend.
Beekeeper Mike Dodok says it is completely normal behavior for bees and they aren't aggressive when they're looking for a new place to build a hive.
https://youtu.be/geaGmScrK-g
"A hive could split where you'll have a new queen emerging -- and they force out the old queen, and half the colony basically goes with her," says Dodok. "They may be out two or three days looking for a location to set up."
That could be in a tree or even in your attic, but if you find a swarm, he suggests calling a beekeeper instead of an exterminator.
"That big ball of bees -- in the centre of that cluster is the queen -- and at that point, they're really not very aggressive at all," he says.
Unfortunately, Dodok says pesticides have hurt bee populations in recent years, and even with increased public awareness about neonicotinoids, there are not as many hives as there used to be.
"Those problems are still out there, but we still do have wild, feral colonies that are out in the woods or elsewhere," he says. "When the hives get too populous, they will do the natural split and the swarming."
Dodok says if you can not get a hold of a beekeeper to come and take the swarm away immediately, the swarm will usually leave within a few days anyway.
