I saw a bee tree in the making!! “Absolutely amazing”, I kept saying to myself.
Now, people always ask me where the name of the pottery comes from, and I go on and explain bee trees because a lot of people have never heard of one. It is a solid tree, that house-hunting bees find once they swarm from either a man tended hive or another natural hive in the wild. We had two very close to our home when we first moved here 25 years ago. Because of mite infestations and a lightning strike those tree hives are now gone. But yesterday came, and we now have ourselves a new bee tree and thousands of new neighbors. (we don’t mind them because they’re very quiet and very good at gardening) 
It’s hard to describe what brought me out of my quiet introspection as I was walking up our tree lined gravel lane. The buzzing must have been there but was increasingly getting louder until it startled me and I thought it was a helicopter approaching. When I mentally focused on the noise I realized it was bee buzzing to the Nth degree. I thought “WOW” and started looking for a huddled mass of bees clinging to their precious queen. What I saw instead were thousands of bees about 20 feet off the ground flying in what seemed to be a very agitated chaotic dogfight. When I focused visually, I saw masses of bees flying to and landing on the sweet gum, where lightning had left it’s mark a number of storms ago. There was one entrance at which it looked like the chaos was pointed. By the time I went to get my camera, 100 feet to the house and back, the buzzing and chaos seemed to be quieted to half. I watched in amazement as what I had interpreted as chaos was actually a very organized system for getting thousands of bees into a little hole to set up shop. Within 15 minutes, all was quiet, the bees were home and all that was left were the guard bees at the entrance. I tried to capture the bees with pictures but just didn’t have a good enough lens, but if you look at the old lightning streak in the tree, the brownest parts along the strike are honey bees. I just am so thankful to have been in the right place at the right time. These little creatures really deserve a lot of respect and we should all be thankful for their hard work, determination and intelligence.
Welcome to the property new neighborzzzzzzzzz!!