I came home yesterday and went out back to water my yard a little. As I was talking with TR and @aelerelean, I mentioned the bee swarm on the back fence.  They’d been there over two weeks by this point. I said “oh, they’re not aggressive because they haven’t found a home. There’s nothing to protect.” @aelerelean went to check them out. Yeah. They have indeed established a colony. On my fence. The part of the fence that gets full sun all day long. “oh no” the internet said “they’ll stay 4 days at most. They like spaces that can be protected and temperature controlled!” How very, very wrong the internetwebtubes were. This is a spot just under the pitiful shade of a vine (seriously, the leaves are maybe 2 inches long), on a chain link fence, completely unprotected. No nooks. No crannies. The reason why this vine flourishes in the summer is because it likes…DIRECT GODDAMN SUN. So how is this beneficial to bees?  I know not. @aelerelean believes that these are lazy bees. When they swarmed, the vine had blooms. Easy food source? Perhaps. The blooms are gone.  Seriously, I thought bees were smarter than this. Hell, I should have been smarter than this to believe a homeless swarm would just chill for over two weeks.

For comparison:

Here’s the swarm on the 15th: [nggtags gallery=swarm]
Here’s the hive: [nggtags gallery=hive]

As you can see, there’s wax now. Wax. Meaning it’s a full blown frigging hive. ARGH! Now I gotta pay for someone to take them alive. It seems that no beekeepers want unknown wild bees in the Texas area. I blame killer bees. 🙁

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