20/08/2026
Every season I spend time with the bees, they teach me something new. I’m not surprised these little insects have survived for millions of years, their determination and resilience are incredible.
A couple nights ago, I discovered a tiny swarm in my bee yard. I watched them land and went to collect them. When I found the queen, she was being aggressively balled and stung by a small group of worker bees. I broke up the ball, and the queen flew off.
About 45 minutes later, the queen returned where the little cluster had settled in the nuc box and I again saw bees trying to ball and kill her in the nuc. I caged her overnight to give everyone a chance to settle down.
Now, two days later, the story looks very different. I released the queen and the bees are feeding her, fanning around her, and showing a tremendous amount of interest in her. So far, everything looks good.
I’ve been thinking about what could have happened that first evening. One possibility is that she was a rejected or old queen and was being replaced and driven out by her colony. Some loyal bees stayed with her. But another possibility is that this was a tiny, stressed swarm that attempted to land or enter an occupied hive. The resident guard bees may have intercepted the swarm queen and attacked her, essentially driving the swarm away. Perhaps only a small group of guard bees were involved in the balling while the rest of the swarm remained nearby, eventually reorganizing in the trees. Once the threat was gone, the guard bees would have returned to their hive, while the swarm and queen continued trying to regroup.
That could explain why I saw only a small golf-ball-sized group aggressively attacking her rather than the entire cluster. It could also explain why she flew away, yet returned to the same group of bees later.
Of course, I’ll never know exactly what happened that evening. That’s part of what makes keeping bees so fascinating. There are always more questions than answers, and sometimes you get to witness a tiny piece of their incredibly complicated social world.