andrzej_oleksa's Favorites

After storms, came across this honey bee hive inside of a giant downed pine. Hopefully I’ll live another day, as I couldn’t help but sample! Delicious! No bees in sight?
—- (googled info below)
Feral or wild Apis mellifera honeybees are eusocial, meaning they live in large, well-organized colonies employing a strict division of labor in regards to building and maintaining hives and caring for offspring. Commonly building their hives in hollow trees, they are cavity dwellers, a characteristic that makes the species easily domesticated. In the wild, they will seek out an enclosed space with a capacity of 15 to 100 liters in which to build their hive. Once the bees have selected a suitable tree with a hollow trunk high enough off the ground to deter honey hunters and with a south-facing, downward-pointing entrance, they set to work preparing their new hive. The bees strip off outer layers of bark to smooth the walls, then seal and coat them with propolis or "bee glue" made from tree and plant resins in preparation for building wax honeycombs.

This wild hive showed up in our front yard a few years back. Sometimes they go away in the winter (although this winter they stuck around) and one time they were driven out by ants (possibly crazy ants.) They are non-aggressive and don't bother anyone.

Feral (wild) western honey bee nest in rock crevice. At first I thought the bees were just collecting salts or minerals, but numbers were too large and saw male drone land and enter "nest". Also saw one bee carry out and deposit a dead sister bee.

Oct 15, 2020
Checked the nest and there were no live bees (see 3rd photo). The colony had either moved on or had died out.

Wild, many European Honeybees, Aphis meliferra, hive in big River gum spp tree hollow, bees were constantly on the move very hard to get in focus photos of them, Greenfields Wetlands, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia.

I have posted observations of this 'wild' nest previously. I intend to keep an eye on it to see how they fare through summer and into autumn/winter.
While some bees are flying into holes in the (kanuka) trunk there are a lot visible and active on the surface (where honey may be exuding from inside the nest?)

I have posted two previous observations of this 'wild' nest (26 Dec 2021 and 1 Feb 2022).

On this most recent occasion there was much reduced activity/numbers, enabling me to get photos of bees on the honey comb.
Photos taken with telephoto lens - nest about 2.5 metres above the ground.

The Final Nature Walk Find Was A Doozy
Went on a little nature walk with my daughter & 2 of my grandkids. The fourteenth and final thing we saw was as we were returning. We had to cross thru an area where a new housing development was starting up. This area had streets and brick walls up around plots of land with no houses yet. There was a hive of wild honeybees inside one of the brick walls. This is the opening where they were coming and going. A very cool thing to see. Nice way to end our nature walk.

The hole had been inhabited by a family of bees since at least 2018 when the owner bought the house, the previous owner also reported having had issues with bees in this same corner. The owner reported seeing this family swarming in 2021. The bees had been removed as requested by the landowner. Another wild hive of bees had been tracked down a dozen of metres away from this hive.

These wild honey bees set up a hive in a slit in one of our older trees this summer. This afternoon around 3, a lot of them swarmed outside the hive with an intense buzzing. We are wondering if it is possible that the hive split (maybe with a second queen) and part of the hive moved to another tree? I don't know enough about bees, but we heard buzzing from another tree about 50 yards away from the first one... The photos were taken of the bees that remained with the original hive. These are wild bees that have taken up residence in a hollow tree at the edge of our woods.

I have been keeping an eye on this 'wild nest' over the last year (previous observations posted on 26/12/21, 1/2/22 and 28/4/22).
After falling to almost zero activity during the winter months (June-August), and taking some time to get going again, it is now in full swing with lots of bees coming and going and visible activity in the tree crevice (a large Kanuka).

Wild bee hive honeycomb anchored in Oak tree trunk along Bucks Creek Trail. It looks like some bird or mammal had pecked or clawed at the honeycomb as a portion had fallen down into some lower oak tree branches (second photo).