The swarm !

What an interesting day I had yesterday, it started quite normally, and as I walked into our lounge I heard a strange noise, it sounded a little like a helicopter I thought. On looking out of my window, I was horrified to see the air was black with a swarm of bees, so I went around the house like a mad woman, shrieking at everyone to close windows and get the dogs in. The swarm continued to mass around our garden, and eventually started to land on the veg plot, potatoes first then on the rose bushes.

After about half an hour the air had calmed and the bees had congregated around the stem of a big rose bush, the makeshift hive was really very impressive. After my daughter looked swarms up on the Internet, she said that they would be fairly passive, and would be sending scouts out to find a new hive site, but until that was found they could be in our garden for a couple of days.
I have to say that I wasn't too keen in keeping them for a few days, so we called Environmental Health, who put us in touch with a local beekeeper. He came out and we spent a very interesting and informative hour talking to him about bees.

Needless to say, he sorted everything out, and after putting a hive box down by the rose bush and leaving in until about 10pm last night, all but one bee was in the box when he came back for them. What a day - I learnt a lot.