Random thoughts

Today, I went to Don Pablo’s in Columbia for a quick happy hour. In the parking lot, there was a small patch of grass and some trees surrounded by a curb, common in many parking lots. I notice a good bit of clover in bloom in the grass (something I would never have noticed if I didn’t keep bees) and I saw a couple of Italian honey bees collecting nectar from the clover.

Given the flight range of a honey bee is about a mile and a half, I suspect these bees were from a feral colony. I seriously doubt anyone is keeping bees in the commercial and heavily suburban areas within a mile and a half radius Don Pablo’s. This put a smile on my face. It is good to see there are still feral colonies out there that have not been killed of by mites, CCD or uniformed humans with cans of Raid.

What I find even more interesting, is that you rarely ever hear of swarm sightings or other kinds of European honey bee “inconveniences” in the local media. This shows that feral bees are thriving just under the radar of human awareness. Bees are highly evolved survival machines that (hopefully) will be around for a long time.