>I don't know about 'taking over', but we see swarms issuing and sitting on 
>other hives regularly.  Sometimes they enter, sometimes not.  Queenless 
>hives  suddenly have a laying queen and larger  populations  that we 
>recall.    Sometimes, though they don't enter, but build underneath or 
>between hives.

I also see these things .

. swarms which build wax under the entrance of another hive. A swarm drawing 
wax between hives on a pallet. Queenless hives with a mysterious fertile 
queen cell.

>Who can explain it?  I can't.

I can't either. I am amazed by the bees. At times I will sit and watch the 
bees coming and going. I now think back to when I was a boy sitting and 
watching.

For me my friend Douglass Whynott sums beekeeping up  on the last page of 
his book "Following the Bloom"
"Across America with the Migratory Beekeepers"
quote page 206:
"I like to watch them,most of all ,and now,when I see them making their 
sweeping arcs, when they glide down among the crowds of bees at the hive 
entrance , I just watch.
CONTRACTION HAS FOLLOWED EXPANSION ,AND I SOMETIMES THINK OF A ZEN SAYING ;
AT FIRST MOUNTAINS WERE MOUNTAINS,AND THEN THE MOUNTAINS WERE NOT MOUNTAINS, 
BUT SOME OTHER THING,NOW MOUNTAINS ARE MOUNTAINS AGAIN.
Doug continues:
"The sentence comes closer to describing where I am now . I'am not 
professing enlightenment ,or special knowledge , or anything like that. Only 
that for me the bees are bees again"

Those which have worked around large numbers of bees understand the meaning 
of the above.

Douglass Whynott peeked into a world few ever see.

read the book.

We had hoped maybe he would stay but he was only passing though.

bob
 

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