Western Honey Bee Nest - closeup 2, Netherlands

A few weeks ago, my friend Barry ringed me to say that right in front of his door, a brand new nest of Honey Bees was spontaneously assembling, asking me if I'm interested in photographing it.

The queen had decided to pick this particular tree as a great site to nest, which led to a cloud of workers following and clustering into this pretty large nest.

Unfortunately, this was a low tree on a children's playground, so the municipality had to remove it. This was done by a professional bee keeper whom much to our surprise, did so first with light protection only, followed by none at all.

His first attempt to shake the entire nest into a basket failed, as the basket's contents did not include the queen itself. Without the queen, the nest is not removed, so we learned that day. His second attempt also failed, and at that point I had to go :)