Having read about the losses of bee populations worldwide, I was astonished to see a huge honey bee cluster hanging from a branch of my neighbors’ small fruit tree the other day. The bees had literally appeared overnight. To my amazement, thousands of bees clung to each other in a cluster the shape of a giant pinecone. The next day I was even more surprised when a humming sound, akin to freeway noise,”rapidly arose in the backyard, intensified, and subsided, all within seconds. I looked up just long enough to witness thousands of bees speckle the sky as they headed southeast. Sure enough, my neighbors’ bees were gone.

The experience had just been remarkable enough for me to want to learn more about bees. Did you know that April to June is bee-swarming season in San Diego? From what I read, a bee colony has little incentive to swarm during the first year of a queen’s life. But during her second spring, she appears to be programmed to swarm. Spring bloom and longer days create a desire for the colonies to split and to create new ones. During that period, the queen bee and roughly 10,000-15,000 worker bees will leave their existing location to find a new home. Until they do, they may take up temporary residency, clustering on a tree branch, as they did in my neighbors’ yard.

While most of the bees remain clustered together on this intermediate stop, 20-50 scout bees will forage for a permanent location. Each scout then promotes the potential site she found by dancing in a specific way to indicate direction and distance. The more animated her dance, the more excited about her findings she is. Different scouts may promote different sites. When all scouts agree on a location the entire honey bee cluster flies to it. It was the swarming to their final location that I witnessed the other day. And it was a sight worth seeing.

One final piece of advice: If you encounter a cluster of bees, call a beekeeper. Do not kill or disturb the bees by spraying pesticides or water on them.

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.