By David Papke

The first of May, late afternoon, the closing of a splendid Spring day. Sue and I had just come  in from a walkabout.

She had an idea for dinner and went off to the kitchen and I thought I’d read for a while when, through the sunroom windows, some movement out by the road caught my attention–the glint of light off tiny wings which I instantly, instinctively recognized! A swirling mass of honey bees moving through a patch of sunlight. My first thought–oh no, there goes a swarm from one of my colonies. But then–wait, they’re not flying off, they’re coming this way!

As I went out the back door I told Sue, “there’s a swarm” (a familiar refrain this time of year), but by the time I reached the front yard the bees were gone.

Then I heard them, navigating their way through the branches of the old Sweet Gum that shades the front of our house. They were directly above me now and from the direction they were moving I had a strong feeling where they might be going, the bait hive under the overhang of our bank barn where every year it becomes the go-to nesting site for several swarms.  

The heart of this expansive swarm was now flying 25 feet above me and moving at a walking pace; it was easy to stay directly beneath them and track the direction and speed of their movement and it occurred to me that I might also be able to discern the flight of the scout bees which direct the swarm to the chosen nest site. 

“Flight Control in Swarms,” a chapter in Tom Seeley’s most recent book,“Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners,” delves into the puzzle of how swarms manage to fly directly to a new dwelling place, a very specific destination which may be nothing more than a small knothole in a large tree deep in a forest. The precise knowledge and control of a swarm’s flight direction and progress is nothing short of amazing, and Seeley’s observations over the years have unlocked many of that puzzle’s mysteries.

Working with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State University in 2006, Seeley set out to investigate how nest-site scouts control the flight direction of swarms. The engineers he worked with explained how they could create a video using point-tracking algorithms to track individual bees as a swarm passed overhead.  These algorithms would determine, for each bee, her height in the swarm cloud, her flight speed, and her flight direction.

Twice they were able to get a swarm to fly directly over the high-speed video cameras at two points down the swarm’s flight line. “This tracking revealed the trajectory of every bee that appeared in the visual field of the camera when the swarm flew over it. Also the size of each ellipsoidal blob (each honey bee) told us the height of the bee above the camera, so we could distinguish the movements of bees in the top and bottom of the swarm cloud.”

Seeley continues: “I struggle to express in words what it was like to go from watching thousands of swarm bees swirling overhead, to seeing graphs that revealed clear patterns in the commotions of their flights . . . .the most delightful revelations of this analysis of the video recordings are the proofs that the fastest flying bees were indeed streaking in the direction of the chosen homesite (with a ‘bee flight angle’ of 0 degrees) and that the slowest-flying ones were heading in the opposite direction (180 degrees). Also, comparing the upper and lower plots show that the speediest bees were mainly in the upper half of the swarm cloud.”

Is that what I was witnessing? I believe it is; however, to the naked eye, a swarm overhead is just a chaotic, random-flying cloud of bees. I did observe that when a gust of wind blew the swarm off-course, all the bees turned as one and headed into the wind and back on course. When they neared the barn’s roof, the swarm slowed and stalled. I looked, but didn’t see any bees on the bait box below which was tucked under the overhang, but in front of the overhang flew what I assume were several dozens of scout bees circling, enticing the swarm to come down. It wasn’t long before the swarm cloud descended and bees began landing on the front of the box, circling around the entrance hole en mass in a counter-clockwise direction before disappearing inside. Astonishing!

If you are interested, I recommend Tom Seeley’s book referenced here, subtitled “Twenty Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved.” And solved they are, eloquently so. Although I claim no comparison to Tom Seeley’s knowledge, experience and powers of observation, I do feel akin to the joy he describes as wonderful and amazing when observing honey bee behavior - to stand among the swirling throng of a swarm is one of Nature’s most unique gifts.

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