Ralphs Irvine Beehive

Last Sunday, while at the checkout stand at my local Ralphs, folks inside the store started gasping at a huge swarm of bees that began swirling out in the parking lot. I took my groceries home and came back with my camera. The bees had mellowed out by then:

You can see the hive as I got down a little bit:

And then a little closer:

I'm using my little Nikon Coolpix L20 Digital Camera with 3.6 Optical Zoom. It's been fantastic for point-and-click at tea parties, although not so great for closeups like these. Speaking of which, I'll have what Ann Althouse is having (er, using). Here's another angle of the hive. A couple of bees started to come at me, and while I'm not sure if these were the "killer" Africanized bees, I didn't feel threatened. That said, they were densely packed and potentially dangerous if someone were to get attacked by the swarm:

Africanized bees defend their colonies much more vigorously than do European bees. The colonies are easily disturbed (sometimes just by being nearby). When they do sting, many more bees may participate, so there is a danger of receiving more stings. This can make them life threatening, especially to people allergic to stings, or with limited capacity to escape (the young, old, and handicapped), and to confined livestock or pets. Once disturbed AHB will continue the attack for a long distance.

Anyway, Althouse has another photoblog here.

Meanwhile, I'm looking into a more specialized camera. I'm starting to do a lot of photography.

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