The swarm....

So C was coming home from surfing on Saturday and notices a swarm of thousands of bees around the tree in our front yard. It is possible that they are Africanized bee's (Killer Bee's) but not super likely. I found this info on Wikepedia:

When honey bees swarm from the hive they do not fly far at first. They may gather in a tree or on a branch only a few meters from the hive. There, they cluster about the queen and send scout bees out to find a final location. The swarm may fly for a kilometer or more to the scouted out location.

Swarming creates a vulnerable time in the life of honey bees. Cast swarms are provisioned only with the nectar or honey they carry in their stomachs. A swarm will starve if it does not quickly find a home and more nectar stores . This happens most often with early swarms that are cast on a warm day that is followed by cold or rainy weather in spring. The remnant colony after having cast one or more swarms is usually well provisioned with food, but the new queen can be lost or eaten by predators during her mating flight, or poor weather can prevent her mating flight. In this case the hive has no further young brood to raise additional queens, and it will not survive.

We are going to give them another day or two to move on before requesting that the HOA gardener "take care of" the honey bees that have gathered in our tree. Bee's provide such a valuable service, I hate to kill them but NIMBY--not in my back yard, or front yard as it were.