Swarm buzzes off to next neighborhood
By John Tredrea
There are reportedly a lot fewer honeybees in evidence in this area than there used to be. Where have they gone?
One thing for sure: Thousands and thousands of them were in a tree in Pennington for about three and half hours a recent afternoon.
Tom Timperman, who lives on Burd Street at the corner of Voorhees Avenue, was cutting his lawn when he noticed a huge aggregation of bees in one of his trees.
”I was surprised given the recent disappearance of honeybees that’s been in the news,” he said. “The bees were on one of our trees, from noon till about 3:30 p.m. before moving on to who knows where.”
He said the mass of bees was “like a pulsating heart, constantly in motion. They did absolutely no damage to the tree and left no trace, or honey, after taking off.”
Frantic get-togethers of this kind are caused by either overcrowding or a rival queen bee back at the home hive, according to Jeff Hoagland, director of education at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed association in Pennington.
The bees are just scouting out a new site for their hive and they keep the queen bee at the bottom of the traveling swarm, he said, noting they are not out to harm anyone.
”All that’s on their tiny little minds is, ‘Where is the queen?’” he said.