Transcript:

SWARMING BEESambience: bee swarmingWe're talking about the insects of summer this week, and today we'll step into one of the most feared of insect phenomena: a swarm of bees. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Dr. Norm Gary is a retired entomologist at the University of California in Berkeley. He tells us that when bees swarm, they're really just looking for a new home.Gary: In effect, this swarming is really a mass migration of bees from the parent colony to the new nest site. Periodically, the entire colony needs to reproduce, and a single queen can't go away to do this alone.So they literally divide the colony in half. Maybe fifteen, twenty thousand bees, with the queen, go off together to establish a new colony. And that's called swarming.According to Dr. Gary, the sound of the swarm may be intimidating to us, but it helps to keep an ungainly mass of bees together.Gary:When the swarming occurs, there are literally thousands of bees emerging from the hive entrance almost simultaneously. So as you might expect, there's an intense flight sound which probably helps to keep the bees together while they're flying through the air.After swarming, the bees leave the hive and cluster on a nearby branch. And then, at that point, they have a real problem. Where are they going to find a new nest cavity, hollow tree, or what have you? So some scout bees go out, search for these cavities. If they find one, they come back to the swarm and perform a dance on the surface of this ball of bees. And would you believe that they don't always agree on the first day, because the scouts may find different nest sites. But soon, as the scouts begin to dance the same dance and come into agreement, then the entire swarm will break up the cluster and fly to this new cavity.I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.