When the bees came to town

On Monday 27th May, we went to the Botanic Gardens. We learned about bees there in a bee section where there was a bee hive with bees coming out. We learned that bees are attracted to particular colours and shapes of flowers. The colours are: mauve, blue, yellow and pink. They like tubular flowers. It is quite common to find bees near tublular flowers.

When we went home we had a little rest and then we went downstairs. When we went down we saw a whole swarm of bees. There was something like 1000 of them! A man came to the door soon after (our next door neighbours had phoned him) and he said that he'd go out and get the bees. The man was wearing a bee protection suit. The suit had this protection face cover with lots of spaces but bees couldn't sting him with his suit on.

Bees can only be in a group with a queen bee, otherwise they have to find a new group. The man got a box and a brush and tipped our table up so that the bees could go on it. It's easier to get bees off a hanging thing, not the ground. At first he got some of them, then he waited for them and moved the table to another place and then he got some more bees. He didn't get all of them but he let us listen to the bees. They made this sounds that was sort of like honeycomb in your throat. It sounded like a tingly feeling in your throat.

In the end, he said that he said he got about a thousand bees into the box. Wow! He hoped he had got the queen bee (which he called the leader) into the box because if he did, the bees would just be worried because they couldn't find the queen and find another group - out of our garden!