Farmer Louise Shaw of Netherton made an unusual discovery when she went to bring in the cows early one morning in a cold, heavy, dewy fog.

“I was getting the herd out of their paddock at 4.30am when I saw this post and thought that is an odd growth, only to find it was hundreds and hundreds of bees asleep.

“It appears that the queen bee had taken off out of a hive that was too crowded and taken some of the worker bees to find another nesting area and my fence post was the attraction.”

Knowing the bees couldn’t stay on the post, Louise called for help.

“At 2pm a lovely lady beekeeper Raeann Steadfrom the Netherton Arataki Bee company arrived to access and start the collection of the hive,” says Louise who was so fascinated, she photographed the process.

“She carefully let the bees form over her hand then shock her hand gently over the spare bee hive box she brought, until she was sure she had the queen bee in the box. The rest of the worker bees followed, this process took around an hour.”

The bees were left in the hive next to the post waiting for the beekeeper to return and collect it at night.

“Beekeepers like to leave the hive next to the area they are found for a minimum of four days so that they settle into the box hive.”

The hive has been re-located in a new site more than five kilometres away from place they were found so the bees won’t fly back to the fence post.

Raeann says because of the apparent strength of the swarm, she decided to use the rather slow process of gathering the bees on her hands before transferring them to the hive box.

“Another way to get the bees into the box is to give the post, or branch if they are in a tree, a sharp jolt and hope they fall into the box, but sometimes when you do that, they will fly off.”

It is not unusual for bees to swarm at this time of year, she says. “New queens are hatching in hives and when that happens the old queen will often leave the hive with some of the workers to form a new hive.”

Beekeeper Raeann Stead of Arataki Honey carefully removes the bees from the fence post and places them in a temporary hive box.