It’s Bee Swarm Season in Oklahoma, Here’s How to Deal With One

How many times have you seen a photo of a bee swarm on tv or online? It's not uncommon in our part of the country, but I've never known anyone that has experienced one before... until now.

Walking out of the house on Saturday morning ready to do some work on the patio, mow the grass, get the backyard ready for Memorial Day a few weekends ago... Getting ready to pop a new tv into the patio tv cabinet when the unmistakable sound of buzzing emanated from inside.

While cracking open the door expecting a handful of those pesky paper wasps, it was a giant huddle of honeybees.

Why do bees swarm?

Simple. This is how a bee hive reproduces. As a hive grows in size, it might outgrow its space, get too crowded, or even grow beyond what the queen can control. In that case, worker bees will orchestrate a new queen to be born that will take flight with half the population to establish a new hive elsewhere.

It's only through luck that they chose the empty tv cabinet. While it's not uncommon, this has to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of occurrence for an individual, right? But what can you do about it? Most people aren't prepared for this.

Call a beekeeper.

While most people might instinctively think to call an exterminator or grab a can of carb-cleaner, this is the wrong thing to do. If you trust the headlines, honeybee populations around the world are supposedly in decline, so saving them is more critical now than ever.

Besides, in most cases, they won't mess with you if you don't mess with them.

We reached out to the friends list asking if anyone had a beekeeper buddy and Facebook delivered. The beekeepers came out and were completely shocked by the size of this swarm.

That didn't stop them though. They dug around in that huge pile to find the queen, trapped it in a cardboard box, and most of the bees migrated to that box over the next 48 hours.

There were still quite a few straggling behind by the end of the weekend, but the beekeeper said they'd eventually fly off and find a new hive when they realized the queen was gone.

How much did removal cost?

Nothing. Not a single dime. As it turns out, beekeepers love getting free bees and will happily come to get yours. In turn, those bees will provide pollination for crops and flowers, and make tons of honey over the summer that will sell quickly at the local farmers' market.