15 Minutes of Bee Flight

  

Growing Degree Days

According to Growing Degree Days (GDD), accumulated heat levels in Atlanta are already brushing up against historic highs. You can see it everywhere: trees leafing out, stone fruit bursting into bloom, and pollinators getting a head start on their busiest season. In my neighborhood, bees are making the rounds—crabapple, ornamental cherry, holly, even the occasional dandelion are all part of the early buffet.  Dave Marshall, our swarm commander, received our first swarm call on March 3rd.

15 Minutes of Bee Flight

Back in 2012, NASA coined the unforgettable phrase “Seven Minutes of Terror” to describe the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars. It captured a brief, intense, high-stakes moment. I found myself thinking about that on Sunday, March 15, when my own backyard delivered a headline-worthy event: “15 Minutes of Bee Flight.”  At 11 a.m., under warm sun and blue skies, my five-frame hive swarmed.

If you’ve never seen a swarm in motion, it’s easy to miss—or misunderstand. From a distance, it’s just a buzzing cloud. Are they leaving? Arriving? It’s impossible to tell. But when you focus—really focus—on the landing board, the story sharpens. In my case, it looked like a moving walkway, a steady stream of bees flowing outward. The old queen and roughly half of the workers and honey are gone!     

I managed to capture it on my iPhone, a small victory considering how fleeting these moments are. Within minutes, the airborne cloud settled high in a Leyland Cypress tree—far too high to reach. So I did what any beekeeper would do in that situation: grabbed binoculars, stared upward, and chatted with a neighbor about the spectacle.

By the next morning, the story had changed.

I was out at dawn, scanning for the swarm. The good news: they had moved on. The bad news: the temperature had dropped hard overnight. On the neighbor’s driveway lay the aftermath—hundreds upon hundreds of dead bees, casualties of the cold. Maybe a thousand in total. Not nearly enough to represent the full swarm, but enough to tell a sobering story.

These were the bees that formed the outer shell, sacrificing themselves to give the colony a chance to survive. It’s a stark reminder of how collective survival works in a hive—individual loss in service of the whole. My neighbors, wonderfully kind about the whole thing, even asked if I wanted to hold a proper ceremony for the fallen. 

In Summary

And that’s the thing about beekeeping, especially in a year like this. 

What begins as a perfectly timed departure—a warm, sunny launch into the promise of spring—can collide almost immediately with the unpredictability of nature. A brilliant plan meets a sudden freeze. It’s hard not to view it through a human lens, to look for logic or fairness in it. But the bees don’t operate that way. They respond, adapt, endure—or don’t.

mason bee sex

I sent these backyard photos to a few computer vision tools with results ranging from wrong to interesting.  I also asked questions using a conversational search engine about the size of male mason bees.
 

iPhone Visual Look Up is for identifying all objects (food, objects and living things too) in photos and videos on the iPhone.  For these photos Visual Look Up produced wrong or slightly wrong answers - Western Honey Bee and Osmia Rufa.

iNaturalist is for recording observations of individual living things, particularly things that can be tied to a species name.  iNat uses photos with a date, location, and crowdsourced identification. iNat's response to the last photo was Genus Osmia (139 native species of mason bee in North America). 

Perplexity AI is a conversational search engine that answers queries using natural language predictive text.  Perplexity's response to, "Are male mason bees smaller or larger than female mason bees?"  Click on the small numbers that link the response to a reference.

Male mason bees are smaller than female mason bees. Females are larger than males, with shorter, thicker antennae. Mason bees are generally much smaller than honey bees or bumblebees, measuring only about 1/4 inch long1

This size difference is a notable characteristic of mason bees, with males being noticeably smaller than females, typically around 7-15 millimeters long in most North American species3

winter-flowering ornamental cherry tree 2024

Year after year, this tree has produced great bee photos foraging on winter-flowering cherry tree.   The time was 2 PM, the temperature was 57°F (13.9°C), blue sky, sunshine, and a loud buzz of bees on this quiet street.

What's next?  Crabapple trees (thanks to Trees Atlanta) are beginning to leaf-out and those flowers will be here soon and attracting honey bees too.

scout bees at swarm trap 2023

From mid-February to early March, Atlanta's maximum temperatures were warmer than expected. On February 21st, the high temperature was 21°F above maximum normals (1991-2020).   

On March 7th, pollen counts soared to 3937 - outdoor surfaces were covered with yellow pollen (pine, oak, sweet gum, hackberry, and birch).    Walking the dog, I discovered bees (mining, carpenter, and European honey) visiting crabapple tree flowers on my street - thanks to Trees Atlanta.

I set 4 hanging swarm traps on 3 properties in my neighborhood, each with: 

• UV-reactive blue swarm trap entrance
• synthetically produced Nasonov pheromone

2 of these traps are on my property and conveniently located where I can watch the swarm trap entrance and the behavior of scout bees from a window. See the video and read page 62 of Honeybee Democracy describing scout bees.

So far, the traps did not attract a swarm - my swarm trap hopes rest with a return to more normal temperatures after this week of frigid spring weather.

dandelion, rosemary and native crabapple 2022

In my opinion, this spring attracted more bees to dandelion flowers than previous years. Thank you to my neighbors who do not spray herbicides.

Strong spring wind gusts made photographing bee foraging difficult and I consequently have not included bees visiting blooming ornamental cherry trees and eastern redbud.   What's left on my iPhone are a few lucky snaps of bees on native crabapple (thanks to Trees Atlanta) and rosemary flowers.

tulip poplar windfall and other spring flowers '21

 

I discovered my first 2021 tulip popular flower windfall.  Click to zoom and see ants attracted to tulip flower sweetness.

Stuck working from home, I have become impatient with all things, including waiting for the Atlanta swarm season to start.  On March 7th I hung 8-frame deep swarm traps from crepe myrtle trees and baited unoccupied hives too - welcome to all scout bees. My overwintered bees are heavy but not drawing new comb or scouting the swam traps as I hoped.  The Atlanta swarm season will start when it starts.

native crabapple and rosemary 2021

Thank you Trees Atlanta for planting pollinator friendly trees like:

• eastern redbud
• native crabapple

I was not going to include rosemary flowers, but iPhone 11 color saturation is fabulous.  This Mediterranean native shrub does well in Atlanta's zone 7 hardiness when located in a sunny location. 

Currently I can't find bees on dandelions and spiderwort flowers - is there an overabundance of honey bee forage?

6 consecutive years of early tropical storms

NOAA writes in Assessing the U.S. Climate in May 2020,  

"Tropical storms Arthur and Bertha formed on May 16 and 27, respectively, which is a record sixth consecutive season for at least one named storm to form in the North Atlantic Basin before the official start of the hurricane season on June 1."

"Widespread 4-8 inch rainfall totals on May 25-26 across southern Florida, associated with Tropical Storm Bertha, brought flooding to Miami and its suburbs."

"Miami reported 7.40 inches of rain on May 26 — the third largest 1-day May total for the city and the 10th largest 1-day total observed for any month on record."

"Miami had its wettest May on record with 18.89 inches, breaking the record of 18.54 inches from May 1968."

NASA scrubbed the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket due to Arthur affecting the recovery area in the Atlantic. After 6 consecutive years of early tropical storms, perhaps it's time to move the official start of the hurricane season to mid-May. 

condensation on cloake board

52 °F and there's a puddle of something on the cloake board landing area.  I dip my finger into the liquid and confirm the taste of simple water - nothing sweet about it.  Stacking the medium sized swarm atop an overwintered hive creates enough combined warm moist respiration to create condensation. Condensation, common in winter has taken me by surprise in spring.

Atlanta Community Food Bank

A long term goal met - an Atlanta Community Food Bank donation of 21 lbs of honey.   In 2017 there was no surplus honey.   This year, the favorable spring climate helped the flowers and honey bees produce lots of surplus honey - enough for friends, neighbors and the Food Bank.  Thank you to all my friends who helped with the crush and strain harvesting.

Please visit the Food Bank. Today's Food Bank is more sophisticated than a warehouse and distribution center for macaroni and cheese boxes or canned goods.