Here in Barga Vecchia we have been in lockdown for the past 2 months but today the 4th May 2020 , those lockdown regulations were slightly relaxed allowing at least some movement away from the house.
A large number of bees took advantage of this and decided to move house.
It’s springtime, it’s absolutely a normal phenomenon this time of year as the bees leave their hive and look for another place to live.
It happens when another queen bee is born inside the hive and either she or the old queen bee are forced to leave the hive as there can only be one queen bee per hive. The sight and sound of a swarm of bees in many people causes acute anxiety and fear but in fact generally speaking the bees unless disturbed, are at their most “friendliest” as it is the only day in the whole of their working life when they do not have to work.
This afternoon a sizeable swarm of bees decided that the perfect place to start a new life would be between the holes in a wall of a house in Barga Vecchia up by there roof on the fourth floor.
The owners of the house were actually quite content that bees were making a home close to theirs, but maybe not quite that close and so they called in the expert to remove the swarm.
Some he managed to persuade to leave their home with some gently applied smoke but by the end of the afternoon the queen bee had still not been enticed into entering a temporary box placed near to the wall.
He is expected to return in the morning to see if maybe they have decided to leave or not.
