During the last day of August, I walked past a Russian sage plant in Shohola and took a close look for any interesting insect life. Russian sage blooms well into the fall and will attract a wealth of pollinators and other insects. Almost right away, I noticed a honey bee. This was noteworthy, because it’s rare that I see honey bees in the wild anymore, and I hadn’t noticed any honey bees in the past in this particular area. As I continued to watch, I saw more honey bees and soon saw that they outnumbered the more common bumblebees and any other pollinators present that day.

The presence of honey bees in these numbers suggested that there may be a wild hive in the area, or possibly, a maintained hive. I know of no beekeepers in the immediate area, but bees can forage for miles in search of nectar to bring back to their hive. A couple of miles is normal for many areas, but in a mostly forested habitat, bees may travel farther while foraging.

If these bees are from a wild hive, it may be a colony established in a tree. One fall, many years ago, I was in the woods just after Thanksgiving. I spotted some peculiar scratch marks about seven feet up the trunk of a dead oak. When I got closer, I saw what were probably claw and teeth marks of a bear; a small half-inch opening was visible where the marks were. It was too cold and late in the fall for bees to be foraging outside, but when I tapped on the trunk, a crescendo of buzzing bees could be heard within the tree. Other than claw marks, the tree was intact; it held up against the bear’s quest for the hive’s honey.

Wherever these bees call home, they are stocking up for the coming winter. The female bees are foraging nectar and pollen for a colony numbering in the thousands, and the late blooming Russian sage patch is likely near the top of the hive’s forage list. The honey bee has been under attack on several fronts recently, and it’s encouraging to see honey bees in numbers foraging where there were none before.