From Ben Caruthers:
"Last year I had a tree in my yard that I would hear humming, eventually the sound went away. I heard it again this year, and thought I might just be crazy. Last night my wife finally heard it too. Today I decided to walk around it with my binoculars to see if I could see anything coming out of it. Attached is what I saw."
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The mass of European honeybees are coating the tree trunk. I sent the photograph to Avery Russell who confirmed that it was a swarm. "They will likely spend a couple hours there before dispersing to find a good
nest location. Though that's a very small swarm - if there aren't more
hidden bees somewhere, it's a goner I think."
Ben tells me he is still hearing the humming when it is quiet in the morning or evening, just not nearly the volume that it was before. Now there is not a swarm of bees around the hole, just a few bees going in and out frequently.
Thomas Jefferson described their arrival in his 1785 book Notes on the State of Virginia.
"The honey-bee is not a native of our continent. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but, when, and by whom, we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly, and consider their approach as indicating the approach of the settlements of the whites."
We have a complicated relationship with these European bees. Obviously they are a big industry both in producing honey and in transporting them to agricultural fields for crop pollination. Colony collapse disorder is a threat to these industries.
On the other hand, honeybees can displace some native bee species, out competing them. While effective in commercial pollination, in nature they tend to be less effective on many native plant species which have their specialist pollinators. The honeybee is a generalist and therefore can pick up pollen from one plant and never visit a second one of that species, effectively wasting that pollen without fertilizing it.
In recent years there has been some cool discoveries about honeybee behavior which are described in Wikipedia. They have colony defenses including fending off predators with the "Mexican Wave" and killing hornets by "balling" where they produce excess lethal heat and high carbon dioxide levels.
Photos by Ben Caruthers