By Devanshi Mehta, Rohit Mullapalli and Zachary Hoffman, Grade 5 English Students

About a week ago, some friends visited us in the lower school; people started buzzing about them! These critters formed a “hive” out of themselves! It was quite a scene. We could see the dark spot from a football field away. These insects are bees. Ah, such sweet little things!

Bees are in a lot of places. They move from one nest to another. But recently, in the lower school and in several other neighborhoods, there have been a lot migrating bees. We don’t know why, we just know that it is happening.

Migrating from an old nest, a swarm of honey bees decide to rest on one of the lower school tree’s branches. These insects made up a solid two cubic foot blob. There were about 35,000 bees waiting for worker bees to find a new location to build a hive.

How it works is that the queen bee sends a few worker bees to find a new location for their hive. When the workers come back with the news of a new place to settle down, they all travel to that location. But for the time being they were to be our uninvited guests. All of the bees that were not scavenging for a new abode were surrounding a queen bee. The queen bee, being protected from surrounding predators, proudly hovers in the middle of the swarm. Then when the queen bee leaves, her daughter stays behind in the old hive with several worker bees, and she takes a bulk of worker bees with her. Well, they are a busy group!