That One Time a Bee Swarm Took Over My House
In March 2018, I woke to a family member urging me to check out “an infestation” out in the backyard. Grumpy but curious, I dragged my half-awake self out of bed, went downstairs and out the back door, to be greeted by this:
It was a sight to behold. Here was a BBC Earth documentary unfolding right at my backyard! But like most city-dwellers, our appreciation of nature didn’t extend to wanting to host a bee colony in such proximity. After spending about 10 minutes staring at the swarm, I fired up Google on my laptop to find a way out of our urban “problem”. In the span of an hour, I became a self-taught expert on bee behaviour and the type of bees found in Singapore. We were likely dealing with a new or migrating colony, the bees were searching for a new home, and without a hive to defend, they weren’t as easily provoked. Yay!
Next, I began searching for bee relocation services. We were adamant about not killing the bees, so calling pest control was out of the question. I stumbled upon BEE Amazed Garden, founded by John Chong, a retired educator-turned-beekeeper. Although we didn’t get external help removing the bees in the end and ended up using smoke from burning incense as a deterrent, the idea of being a beekeeper in urban Singapore stayed in my mind.
Naturally, when the opportunity arose three years later to feature individuals who’ve taken the road less travelled in our video series Making Good, I jumped at the chance to find out more about the beekeeping profession from John himself:
While our attempt to discourage the bees from staying worked (smoke tricked them into thinking something in the area was on fire), it took a long time to do so. By sunset, most of the bees had retreated into the toilet. The bee swarm had also increased in size, due to returning worker bees. I will never forget the noise they made — it’s one thing to hear a single bee buzzing, but a colony? It was loud.
It didn’t help that some of the worker bees also got lost, and were flying about and landing in the living room, the kitchen, even the stairwell. Apparently bees are like planes — they take just enough fuel to forage, and if they get lost, they’ll need to find a way to refuel for the extra distance travelled.
We put on slippers and tried not to step on the fallen worker bees, because we didn’t want to kill them or get stung. A stinging bee releases isoamyl acetate, an alarm pheromone that smells like bananas, which tells other bees to sting you too. It was therefore of utmost importance not to provoke any of them.
Miraculously, we got through the day — and night — unscathed (even when I had to brush one off my neck). The bees stayed the night in the toilet, decided the area wasn’t worth their trouble, and left the next afternoon.
All in all, I was rather surprised they stayed as long as they did, since there wasn’t a hive. Honey is extremely precious, and bees will spend hours consuming and storing it in their stomachs, leaving only the white waxy honeycomb before abandoning a hive. Without a home, the move should’ve been quicker. Perhaps they didn’t want to leave without the entire colony, or perhaps they couldn’t find a better rest stop… I’ll never know.
It was an unforgettable experience. Not one that I’d like to go through again, though I’m glad I did. I came to appreciate the amount of effort beekeepers put into understanding bee behaviour, and their respect for these hardworking creatures, without which our food sources would be in serious trouble.
If you’d like to learn more about these fascinating pollinators, check out these resources:
From left to right:
The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild — Thomas D. Seeley | Physical Copy
Honeybee Democracy — Thomas D. Seeley | Physical Copy, eBook, Audiobook
Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees — Malcolm T. Sanford and Richard E. Bonney | eBook
Our Native Bees — Paige Embry | Physical Copy, eBook
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Text by
Woo Pei Qi
National Library Board
