On Friday afternoon the feral honey bee colony in oak tree 5532 swarmed. Julie Newblé found the swarm hanging from a blackthorn branch in the hedge between Puddle Corner and the decorated Bridge and used the last of her phone’s charge to photograph it. In her picture you can just see the swarm’s home tree, oak 5532, in the background.
On Saturday morning the Southwick parkrunners reported a wasps’ nest, with the rather panicky addendum that it was “growing in size”. As the report included a map which showed the putative wasps’ nest to be exactly where we knew there had been a swarm of bees late the previous afternoon, and as we knew that a wasps’ nest doesn’t visibly “grow in size”, we prepared to send out a recce party. Then fabulous photographs (correctly labelled bees) arrived from parkrun’s photographer Martin Pearce.
Images of bees by Martin Pearce
If you saw the swarm, particularly if you know where it went after it left the hedge beneath oak tree 5532, please let us know.
Here is a link to another post about the reserve’s feral bees.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 
A swarm of bees is such an astonishing thing to see, so noisy and intimidating even when you know they won’t hurt you.
I was lucky enough to see this. Absolutely beautiful to watch. As a daily park user I love the variety of things I see on my walks. Very grateful to have the park
We gave it plenty of room at parkrun yesterday.
Swarming bees are under orders, far too interested in obeying their queen’s pheromones to think about stinging anybody.