Tuesday, March 19, 2013

BEE TREE

Donald A. Windsor

Wild honey bees nest inside hollow trees and we sometimes find them flying in and out of an opening.  However, I have never seen the inside of a natural hive.

Until Sunday morning on a Bullthistle Hike through the Basswood State Forest in Oxford.  We were taking a well-deserved break on and around a large fallen tree trunk, when Dot Rice noticed the hollow tree trunk contained a bee hive.

The bees probably abandoned the hive when the tree blew over, apparently several years ago, because the wax honeycombs had deteriorated to a fragile dry material.

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